The COVID-19 pandemic created enormous uncertainty for achieving the sustainable development goals in waste management China implemented a number of new policies recently to encourage waste-to-energy (WTE) and waste-to-material (WTM) industry, which was also impacted by the spread of COVID-19, while the impact on the solid waste industry was merely discussed In this work, the quarter-level financial statement data of thirty listed companies in Chinese Stock Market were analyzed by applying ARIMA intervention analysis, moreover, a system dynamic model was established for examining the impacting pathway of the pandemic Main results are: (1) the total annual turnover of total solid waste industry increased by 28 2 times in recent 14 years, however, the estimated turnover of solid waste industry in 2020 dropped around 55 8 billion CNY;(2) the WTE industry kept growing (+21%), the WTM industry dropped significantly (−28%), while the waste disposal industry and other solid waste industry varied slightly (−10% and +9%), comparing their turnovers in 2019 and 2020;(3) the average trade-prices of the secondary materials during the COVID-19 pandemic were only 43 4%–85 8% of the maximum price from 2017 to 2019, resulting in the decline of the WTM industry Considering a possible sluggish growth of the solid waste industry, the waste separation and zero waste programs in China may meet non-trivial challenges in the future Policy implications are put forward, such as quantitative simulating the long-term impact, increasing investment and incentive on waste recycling, and building an internal circulation system for waste management
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on waste-to-energy and waste-to-material industry in China