Making circular economy an art form

Wan Tingting, 37, a graduate of Guangxi University with a master's degree in art, finds herself now an expert in another form of art — the art of recycling.

For 10 years, she has been working at Yuguang Gold & Lead in Jiyuan, Henan province, now acting as a deputy section chief of the plastic workshop at its Regenerated Lead Plant.

As a nonferrous metal giant and a large international conglomerate with global sourcing and global sales, Yuguang has been transporting mountains of rocks, mineral powder and waste batteries from the world and maximizing the full recovery of all available resources, before making the leftovers into brick-type building materials, she said.

"When I followed my husband to work at Yuguang 10 years ago, I was a complete novice, knowing nothing about the recycling industry," Wan recalled.

But as the company continued to adjust its industrial structure, and actively improved the recycling of renewable resources, Yuguang has become known as the world's Chinese example of regenerative lead development.

"Currently, the annual treatment of renewable lead in Yuguang has reached 540,000 metric tons, and it ranks among the world's largest renewable lead enterprises," Wan said.

At a central control room of the Regenerated Lead Plant, she checked the processing data in real time, and then walked to an adjacent glass window, overlooking an intelligent and automated production workshop, where an unmanned forklift picks up stacks of lead ingots and arranges them neatly in rows and packs.

At present, Yuguang imports millions of tons of mineral powder each year, moving mountains of foreign resources to Yuguang for smelting, she said, adding that it also recycles over 1 million tons of waste batteries a year.

"Back in 2015, Yuguang initiated the first waste lead-acid battery recycling network system in the country, forming a closed-loop of renewable lead recycling," she said.

She said the Regenerated Lead Plant's intelligent processing system can annually "swallow" 540,000 tons of waste lead-acid batteries and "spit out" various products such as regenerated lead and lead alloys.

She added that since the mid-1980s, Yuguang has begun to advocate for green smelting, driving the green development of the nonferrous industry.

Nowadays, its smelting factory is like a garden, with greenery visible everywhere. In its closed production line of recycled lead, the "rebirth" of waste batteries vividly interprets the core essence of its circular economy. In the water treatment workshop, the deeply treated industrial wastewater is crystal clear, showing that green development has become a core competitiveness.

Zheng Xiaotao, now 40, came to work at Yuguang 18 years ago, and now serves as the section chief of the automatic separation II section at the Regenerated Lead Plant.

Zheng said while the total production of waste batteries in China is approximately 6 million tons, Yuguang's processing capacity exceeds 1 million tons, consuming some 17 percent of the nation's total.

He recalled that back in November 2005, Yuguang spent 44 million yuan ($6.5 million) importing a set of recycling systems from Italy, starting its comprehensive recycling of waste lead-acid batteries.

"At first, we could only treat some 18 to 20 tons per hour, but now we can treat 50 tons an hour," Zheng said.

Moreover, 21 years later, Yuguang has its own Metallurgical Machinery Manufacturing Co, producing and exporting recycling equipment to countries such as Belarus and Kazakhstan, both involved with the Belt and Road Initiative, helping bolster the green drive around the world, Zheng said.

"The recycling rate of waste residue in Yuguang is close to 100 percent, and our 'dual circulation circle' of internal and external coordination of lead, zinc and copper systems has been built, forming a complete industrial chain for the development of the circular economy," Zheng said.

"At present, we have become the largest production base for recycled lead, lead-zinc smelting, and silver production in China, and our annual waste lead-acid battery processing can comprehensively recover 31 kinds of valuable metals," said Zhao Jingang, Party secretary and chairman of Yuguang.

"The comprehensive benefits generated by the circular economy make Yuguang's development more stable," he said.

Currently, State-owned Henan Yuguang Group ranks among China's top 500 enterprises as a nonferrous metal manufacturer with revenue exceeding 100 billion yuan in 2025.

Zhao stressed that Yuguang's development largely depends on its technological innovation. The company has built the nonferrous metal sector's first "excellent intelligent factory", and produced high-purity metals with the highest purity in the industry.

"The domestic market share of our high-end lead-based alloys has exceeded 50 percent, while our new energy materials have begun to take shape, and we have produced 16 types of rare, precious and scattered metals," he said.

"Yuguang has proven through our own practices that a traditional polluter can embark on a path of high-quality development that is green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable," Zhao said, stressing that industrial and ecological civilization can coexist harmoniously.