Guangming Daily | Zhuhai, Guangdong: Government-Enterprise Collaboration Breaks the Dilemma of Industrial Pollution Control 2025-08-23

Recently, Doumen Branch of Zhuhai Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment issued the city's first negotiated discharge permit for industrial wastewater in the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) industry to Zhineng Electronics Co., Ltd. The issuance of this "milestone permit" marks the official launch of the innovative "negotiated discharge" model in Zhuhai's industrial sewage treatment field, providing a practical and implementable sample for improving the quality and efficiency of environmental governance in industrial parks.  
 
As the core practical carrier of this model, Zhuhai Xinqing Industrial Sewage Treatment Plant has not only been successfully included in the *Compilation of Innovative Ecological Environment Engineering Cases during the "14th Five-Year Plan" Period* but also specifically addressed the long-standing wastewater treatment challenges in the PCB industry. In Xinqing Science and Technology Industrial Park, where PCB enterprises are concentrated, a transformation of "empowering high-quality industrial development through environmental protection innovation" is accelerating.  
 
As a national high-tech industrial development zone in Zhuhai, Xinqing Science and Technology Industrial Park has formed an electronic information industry cluster focusing on electronic terminals, electronic circuit boards, and cable products, gathering leading enterprises such as Flex, Supertech Industrial, and Yuntaili. However, behind the vigorous industrial development, the heavy metals, complex organic substances, and other components contained in the wastewater from PCB enterprises have long faced the dilemma of "high treatment costs and significant environmental risks." Previously, enterprises in the park implemented unified discharge standards and were required to build high-cost sewage treatment facilities themselves, which not only increased the operational burden on enterprises but also raised the difficulty of supervision for ecological and environmental departments.  
 
To break this deadlock, Zhuhai has built an institutional framework with policies as the starting point. Since the introduction of the *Twenty Measures for the Collaborative System of "High-Quality Economic Development and High-Level Ecological Environment Protection" by Zhuhai Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment*, Doumen Branch has issued the *Guiding Opinions on the Industrial Sewage Treatment Fee Mechanism in Doumen District (Trial)*, innovatively establishing a "one enterprise, one price" performance-based payment mechanism. This mechanism directly links sewage treatment service fees to pollutant treatment effects, ensuring reasonable returns for sewage treatment plants while effectively reducing the burden on enterprises.  
 
As the first signed enterprise, Zhineng Electronics has achieved representative benefits: through the "negotiated discharge" model, the enterprise has not only saved about 30% of environmental governance costs but also significantly reduced the risk of exceeding standards and violations, truly realizing "lightening the burden for development." Behind this achievement is the model's restructuring of "pollution control responsibilities, supervision focus, and operational efficiency."  
 
A responsible person from Doumen Branch of Zhuhai Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment stated that the next step will be to deepen the "negotiated discharge" model in three aspects: promote more qualified enterprises to join the system through on-site investigations by special working groups and an "efficient service model"; closely monitor the dynamic management of discharge permits, strictly enforce law enforcement and supervision over admitted enterprises and sewage treatment plants, and consolidate the main responsibility of "discharging pollutants in accordance with permits"; anchor the goal of sustained improvement in ecological environment quality, assist the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry with high-quality services, and lay the foundation for a circular economy and green investment promotion.