Chengyang District of Qingdao Provides Targeted Services to Reduce Burdens on Enterprises; NorthStar Recycling Transforms Emerging Industrial Waste into 'Urban Valuable Mines'
On December 2, 2025, the China Environment News published an article titled "Transforming Emerging Industrial Waste into 'Urban Valuable Mines' – Chengyang District, Qingdao City Provides Targeted Services to Reduce Burdens on Enterprises" in its Industrial Economy section. The article affirmed the contributions made by NorthStar Recycling to the construction of the "Zero-Waste City." The following is an excerpt from the original text:
Walking into the production base of NorthStar Advanced Recycling Technology (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as NorthStar Recycling), modern production lines operate efficiently, transforming emerging industrial waste such as retired lithium-ion batteries and scrap electrode sheet offcuts into valuable, recyclable resources.
Company representatives explained that its self-developed dry pre-treatment technology for retired power batteries effectively addresses key challenges in environmental protection, safety, real-time precise carbon footprint calculation, and traceability. By achieving live-battery crushing through precise atmospheric control, it eliminates safety hazards and enables efficient separation and recovery of electrolytes, establishing a comprehensive component separation and recovery system. This turns what was once an "environmental burden" into a "valuable mine" of precious resources like cobalt, nickel, and lithium. The technology reduces carbon emissions by 30% compared to other methods, and the production line's digitalization level leads the industry.
Furthermore, NorthStar Recycling has built a full-chain system encompassing "collection — cascade use — regeneration," establishing Qingdao's first demonstration factory for recycling retired power batteries. A 30,000-ton cascade use line, a 10,000-ton crushing and sorting line, and a 2,000-ton scrap electrode sheet crushing line operate continuously and efficiently. The secondary resource comprehensive utilization laboratory frequently delivers new achievements. With its robust capabilities, the project was successfully included in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Industry Standard Conditions for the Comprehensive Utilization of Waste Power Batteries from New Energy Vehicles (Fifth Batch) as a compliant enterprise. It has also become a key project for Qingdao's "Zero-Waste City" initiative and a major project under the "14th Five-Year Plan" for the circular economy. This provides an industrial-level demonstration model for the "Zero-Waste City" construction in Chengyang District and strengthens the core foundation for regional hazardous waste resource utilization.
In recent years, within the process of building a "Zero-Waste City" in Chengyang District, Qingdao City, Shandong Province, technological empowerment and targeted services have become dual engines driving regional green transformation. From the high-value utilization of emerging industrial waste to "burden reduction" for micro and small enterprises in hazardous waste management, Chengyang District connects the collective force for green development across the entire area through the model of "enterprise practice + departmental support."
The image shows staff from the Chengyang Branch of the Qingdao Ecological Environment Bureau in Shandong Province providing on-site guidance to help enterprises standardize their hazardous waste management. Photo by Sui He
"Advancing the construction of a 'Zero-Waste City' requires both enterprises to break through challenges with technological innovation and precise services from ecological environment departments," explained a relevant official from the Chengyang Branch of the Qingdao Ecological Environment Bureau. The bureau, based on the actual industrial conditions of the region, has established a multi-dimensional, comprehensive support system for "Zero-Waste" development. For leading enterprises like NorthStar Recycling, it has created a specialized "one enterprise, one policy" guidance mechanism to assist them in optimizing hazardous waste resource utilization processes and transforming technological achievements into industry benchmarks. For the numerous, widely distributed micro and small enterprises, the focus is on addressing their common pain points—"small waste generation volumes, weak professional capabilities, and high management costs"—by implementing unified hazardous waste management, thereby "reducing burdens and loosening constraints" for them through process design.
Source: China Environment News
