Exploring the New Generation of "Scrap Kings" in County Towns: How the "Post-90s" Are Revolutionizing Scrap Collection Stations

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Exploring the New Generation of "Scrap Kings" in County Towns: How the "Post-90s" Are Revolutionizing Scrap Collection Stations

Standing at 1.75 meters tall, with neatly styled bangs, wearing a Chinese-style black short-sleeved shirt over a pure white T-shirt, paired with beige wide-leg pants and white sneakers. Walking into Jiangxi Lvxun Resource Recycling Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Lvxun Group"), one meets Liu Xue, the deputy general manager. It is hard to associate this young man, born in 1999, with the traditional public perception of a "scrap collector."

When discussing the recycling and utilization of renewable resources, Liu Xue readily uses professional terminology: "An electric vehicle can be dismantled into more than 20 types of recyclable materials. The rear wheel motor contains rare earth permanent magnets, which is the most valuable component in the whole vehicle recycling process." He also notes, "Plastics can be divided into ten categories, including mixed colors, miscellaneous colors, and sound plastics." Not far away, in the compression workshop, several young workers are operating automated equipment, compressing thousands of plastic bottles into neat blocks.

According to a report by Phoenix News Jiangxi, a group of "post-90s" youths rooted in county towns are redefining the scrap recycling industry with new concepts and new technologies. The report takes readers on a visit to the vivid practices of the new generation of "scrap kings" in transforming traditional scrap collection stations.

Recycling Stations in Residential Communities: Old Items for Points, Instant Crediting

"Sister, I placed an order this morning: 4 packs of deep-well salt, 1 bag of laundry detergent, and 1 pack of disinfectant effervescent tablets!" The outlet staff replied, "They were delivered at 10:30 AM, you can just pick them up." In the square of Kangsheng Sunshine City residential community in Minhe Street, Jinxian County, such a conversation came from a glass room. This is one of the "Internet + renewable resource recovery" outlets laid out by Lvxun Group.

"These items are cheaper than in the supermarket. I can exchange them using the eco-credits I saved from previously selling cardboard and plastic bottles, without spending extra money. The WeChat mini-program will deduct it directly," a resident with the online name "Happy Tiger" told the reporter. She has delivered old clothes, cardboard, and other items to the outlet 9 times in total, exchanging them for dishwashing liquid, cooking wine, and other goods.

Fu Fangsheng 79 pages, Zhou Genlan 84 pages, He Jin 89 pages... On the walls inside the room, several pieces of paper filled with names and page numbers are posted in rows. "This is a directory I specifically made for the elderly who don't know how to use the mini-program. When the elderly come to deliver items, they need to register their names, delivered items, weight, price, and other information. Now the number of people and times of delivery is increasing. Each person has a page, clear at a glance," introduced Zhang Minglan, the person in charge of the outlet.

Currently, Jinxian County has built 118 such community recycling outlets. The eco-credits earned by residents from selling recyclable materials can be exchanged for various daily necessities in the eco-credit mall of the "Little Red Heart" WeChat mini-program. After residents place orders online, the staff will centrally prepare the goods and deliver them to various outlets, allowing residents to pick them up nearby on the same day.

The New Look of Scrap Collection Stations: Zoned Sorting, Fully Traceable Transactions

In the past, local scrap recycling mostly relied on scattered small stations, with rough classification, messy stacking, and a lack of standardized supervision for transactions. Now, this old model is being replaced by a brand-new sorting system.

At the Jinxian County Renewable Resource Sorting Center, the reporter saw a 2,500-square-meter operating site clearly divided into a recycling area, sorting area, dismantling area, and baling area. Paper, plastics, metals, and textiles are stored in separate zones, and two professional sorting and baling production lines are continuously operating, with the roar of machines constantly heard.

"The 6 kg of plastic bottles and 18 kg of yellow paper collected this morning were brought directly here and sold for 39.6 yuan!" In the recycling area, 70-year-old cleaner Hu Wei checked the receipt in his hand, confirmed the arrival notification on his mobile phone, and then started his tricycle and left satisfied.

Du Weishan, the person in charge of the sorting center born in 1994, introduced that the center has established a complete business evidence chain. Every recycling business retains warehousing vouchers and on-site weighing photos. Documents are automatically numbered, and weighing details and payment status are recorded throughout the process, ensuring that every transaction is real and traceable.

"The more precise the front-end sorting and classification, the higher the back-end processing efficiency," Du Weishan said. In addition to receiving recycled materials from 118 outlets, the sorting center also undertakes the supply of goods from large and small scrap stations in the county. Because the purchase price is higher than the market average, many individual retail sellers take the initiative to deliver goods to the door, and more and more local small scrap stations have become stable suppliers.

Currently, the sorting center receives an average of over 30 tons of goods per day and has established long-term supply relationships with many large domestic renewable resource enterprises. Relying on large-scale centralized shipments to connect with downstream large customers, the enterprise can ensure reasonable profits and has also opened up the pathway of "retail sellers - outlets - sorting centers - large processing enterprises."

New Paths for Young People: Cutting Out Middlemen, Weaving a Dense Network Across the Region

Before joining Lvxun Group, Liu Xue worked as an analyst at a listed company in Shanghai, focusing on metal scrap iron research. After coming into contact with new technologies and trends in global waste classification and resource recycling at work, he conceived the idea of joining the physical circular industry.

"Renewable resource recycling and utilization is a real sunrise industry with broad development space." Learning that Lvxun Group is a wholly-owned renewable resource group under the Jinxian County Supply and Marketing Cooperative Union, and also the first local state-owned enterprise group in Jiangxi Province engaged in renewable resource recycling and utilization, Liu Xue resolutely "jumped" from Shanghai to Jinxian.

Born in 1993, Wan Feifei; born in 1992, Pan Youwei; born in 2006, Chen Ruifan... Today, more and more young people graduated from different universities are joining the front-line positions of procurement, operations, and technology at Lvxun Group.

"Scrap collection stations can also be not dirty, not messy, and not smelly. This industry is very interesting, far more than just simple buying and selling. There are many areas that can be extended and scenes that can be explored," said Pan Youwei, the head of the technology department of Lvxun Group. He majored in automation in college and is now mainly responsible for the development and operation and maintenance of the enterprise's software system.

"In the past two years, we have vigorously introduced young talents, hoping that they will use new thinking and new models to connect the industrial chain, compress the middleman links that add prices at every level in the traditional model, improve recycling efficiency, and promote the standardized development of the entire industry," said Tao Caiwen, general manager of Lvxun Group.

With the addition of these young people, Lvxun Group has innovatively created the "Internet + renewable resource recovery" operation model. Offline, it coordinates the layout of the county's recycling system, integrates self-operated outlets, cooperative outlets, mobile outlets, and compliant individual business stores, deploys township transit stations, and builds a grid management network with clear levels; online, it relies on independently developed intelligent management systems and mini-program online malls to provide users with standardized and intelligent one-stop recycling services.

Relying on the advantages of the state-owned asset platform, Lvxun Group also links multiple resources, cooperates with many state-owned and central enterprises, and regularly promotes green recycling into government organs, parks, enterprises, and institutions, building a new pattern of green circulation with the participation of the whole people and the coordination of government and enterprises.

Stepping out of the office buildings in big cities, a group of young people are taking root in county towns, anchoring the circular economy track, using knowledge and technology to break the public's inherent stereotypes about the scrap recycling industry, turning the inconspicuous "collecting scrap" into a great cause that helps the green development of the county, and injecting a continuous stream of youthful vitality and green momentum into Nanchang's efforts to strengthen the real economy.

Sources

• jx.ifeng.com › web (2026-10-20)
• Original link: Exploring the New Generation of "Scrap Kings" in County Towns: How the "Post-90s" Are Revolutionizing Scrap Collection Stations
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