Guiyu Circular Economy Industrial Park (hereinafter referred to as Park) is one of the official pilot projects of e-waste management, which supports the formalization of e-waste recycling companies [2]. The township and family workshops are replaced by the centralized enterprise in Guiyu [4]. However, this viable solution to these obstacles and the unexpected outcomes of formalization, as well as the concrete value of recyclers is not provided by the current policies (Lora-Wainwright, 2015). In addition, the integration with the formal sector generates the conflict between the original labor organization and the superior upstream waste management.

The spatiality of the recycling industry in Guiyu is highly planned, organized and efficient, based on geography and the location of the industry’s recycling nodes, spanning the geography within certain villages in the South of the country. However, the industrial park is planned to centralize the metals extraction in one location for the convenience of the purification of polluted air. In addition, as the recyclers mention, the workshops are ineffectively designed – too small to store the e-waste, thus the potential security concerns are created. There were three fires in 2017.

Moreover, the recyclers are required to pay for the insufficient environmental services. The fees are charged without invoices and depend on the scale of the workshops’ production. Although the pollution is temporarily solved, the additional fees (i.e. rent and environmental services) are delivered to marginalized recyclers, which increases their costs.

Thirdly, the integrationwith the formal sector generates a legal issue between the recyclers. Many small informal recycling sectors are registered under one company without any notice from the government. The recyclers are concerned that if there is a legal issue – one recycler would need to be responsible for all of the thirteen workshops which are under his name.

Since the formalization process was launched in 2015, the local population seek the access to express their opinions to the government and reflect their dilemma between the environmental conservation and their recycling business. Without being involved into the decision making, there is little opportunity to express their opinions. Due the ignorance of the opinions of the informal recycling sector and the self-developed industrial model under the rooted policy background, the industrial park does not take the existed surrounding into the consideration. Moreover, this marginalized population is forced to relocate their recycling workshops to less developed countries, such as Thailand and Vietnam, because of the increasing additional cost to their business. Although the original goals of the formalization and industrial park are positive to the informal recyclers and attempt to improve the environmental condition in Guiyu, there are barriers to deliver the formalization process, considering the existing surrounding of informal sectors and their opinions.

As of Dec. 1, 2015, by order of regional authorities, all work on e-scrap was to be moved and confined to a large 1.5 billion yuan ($233 million) industrial park, Guiyu Circular Economy Industrial Park, BAN states in a news release. Furthermore, all e-scrap coming into the industrial park must arrive at one central receiving location where it is now screened to disallow foreign e-scrap. While China has long had a national e-scrap import ban, it was never adequately enforced in Guiyu. [5]

The Guiyu National Circular Economy Industrial Park is designed to force the informal e-waste recycling workshops to make the move and merge into 29 big recycling operation. This park processed 150,000 tonnes of e-waste in 2017 and 180,000 tones in the first eight months of 2018.