Decadal progress and provincial disparities How did China 2026 Journal of C

As the world's fastest-growing waste stream, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) poses urgent sustainability challenges. China's WEEE Recycling Fund Policy (WRFP), launched in 2012, has formalized recycling for the 4 + 1 appliances covered by the WRFP through audited dismantling channels. This study develops a spatiotemporal evaluation framework to quantify WRFP's 2013 – 2023 performance across provinces by integrating resource recovery value and carbon reduction into resource-environmental performance assessment. Results show that formal recycling generated RMB 12.8 billion in resource recovery value and reduced cumulative carbon emissions by 31.4 million tons, while also revealing significant regional disparities. Eastern provinces contribute 63.7% of total resource value but require production optimization, whereas western regions show stronger needs for infrastructure expansion. Provincial Malmquist analysis demonstrates 9.2% annual efficiency growth driven exclusively by technological progress, indicating that insufficient industrial scale remains a major constraint. Tobit regression further indicates that rapid growth in household appliance ownership may reduce recycling efficiency under uneven recycling infrastructure. By integrating resource recovery value, carbon reduction, and efficiency change within a unified spatiotemporal framework, this study not only quantifies provincial disparities in WRFP performance.