Facing ever depleting natural resources andthe deteriorating environment, the ChineseGovernment is trying its utmost to develop circulativeeconomy and to work out some modelprojects to crack the hard nut of resource restraintand environmental pollution. In Tianjin,such pilot projects spread across the city, andthey do work, to some extent.

Five of these pilot projects stand out, namely,TEDA, Tianjin Ziya Industrial Park, Lin’gang(near-harbor) Industrial Park, Hangu Electricity-Water-Salt Circulative Economy Demo Projectand Huayuan Industrial Park.

There are four circulative industrial chainsestablished within TEDA. They are about electroniccommunication, machine manufacturing,pharmaceutical chemistry, food and drinkingindustries. The four industrial chains createa network, in which enterprises involved canbenefit from the diversity of products, the closerelationship between each chain, the free flowof resources and the efficient application of resources.The district is almost zero discharging.In 2007, the energy consumption per 10,000-yuan GDP was only 0.187 ton of standard coal,with water consumption per 10,000-yuan GDPbeing just 7.26 cubic meters. The small per-unitGDP energy and water consumption won TEDAthe fame of “TEDA model”.

Tianjin Ziya Industrial Park is the stateleveldemonstration hub for waste electronicproducts recycling and disposing. It is also adisposal garden for imported waste products.Now the garden mainly disposes seventhcategory of imported worn-out mechanicaland electrical products. Every year the parkis able to disassemble 1 million tons of wasteelectronics. Meanwhile, 400,000 tons of copper,200,000 tons of iron and 300,000 plasticcan be produced here, winning the park a nickname as “mine in the city”.

Lin’gang (near-harbor) Industrial Park is basedon marine reclamation land. It is also a conservation-minded, eco-friendly, sustainabledevelopment zone. The Park gives developmentpriority to four systems, namely thegreen petro and marine chemical zone, thecirculative petrochemical industry driven bythe ethylene cracker project, the public projectrecycling system, and the environment protectingsystem. Finally they can come to the effectsof changing waste into resource, decreasingliquid emission, pollution-free gas emissionand zero-draining of the waste water.

Hangu Power-Water-Salt Circulative EconomicDemo District takes Tianjin Northern borderPower plant, one of the first circulative economicexperimental sites of the country, as thecore, trying hard to construct the green circulativeeconomic industrial chain of “electricitygeneration, seawater desalination, salt-making,salty chemical industry, and waste comprehensiveutilization”. This chain link takes electricitygeneration as the drive force, and desalinatesseawater by using the afterheat of the power.The desalinated thick seawater can be madeinto salt. The salt liquid can be produced intosome chemical products like bromide, potassiumchloride, magnesium chloride, magnesiumsulfate, etc.. At the same time, the wasteslike pulverized coal ash made by generatingelectricity will be produced as the buildingmaterials, so that it forms a mode of “resourceproduct-waste-renewable resources”. In thisway, seawater and the energy can be fullyutilized, with “zero emissions” of waste water,waste gas, waste residue and waste heat.

Huayuan Industrial Park has the area of 11.58square kilometer. After ten years of development,the Huayuan Industrial Park has becomethe base of new ideas, new technology and newtalents. It has formed five big industry clusters,which include the green energy, the informationand the software, the integration of machinery,the biological medicine and the new material.Relying on the development of the industrialclusters and the restructuring of enterprises’material, energy, and communication network,as well as the extension of the existing network,the Park has maintained reasonable and specializedlabor division among the producer, theconsumer, the disintegrator within the industrialcluster. Through implementing clean productionand efficient purchase among enterprises in theregion, the Park has achieved the goal of makingthe entire network energy efficient and environmentalfriendly.