Repurposing China's industrial solid waste in mine ecological restoration
Across the globe, non-hazardous general industrial solid waste (ISW) from mining, manufacturing, energy production, and other sectors is piling up. In 2022, global ISW generation exceeded 16 billion tonnes (Bt), and China accounted for about one-quarter of the total (Figure 1A). The pressure from bulk ISW is particularly severe in China, where more than 32 Bt remains in storage or long-term stockpiles (Figures 1B and 1C). Meanwhile, traditional recovery as building materials has weakened because market demand has contracted, while new landfills or stockpiles face land scarcity and tighter environmental controls. To tackle the dual challenges of bulk ISW stockpiles and stagnant utilization in construction, China is therefore turning to mine backfilling and pit filling. In January 2026, China’s State Council released the Action Plan for Comprehensive Solid Waste Management (known as “Ten Actions” for solid waste),1 establishing a governance framework for managing mine-waste backfilling and goaf-filling technologies through technical standards, process supervision, and certified restoration while also committing to the development of detailed implementation rules and increased government financial support (for details, see Section S1). Encompassing both its successes and challenges, China’s experience in mine restoration is expected to serve as a crucial reference for other resource-dependent economies tackling integrated waste management.
Rethinking the strategy for promising mine restoration by utilizing ISW
Mine restoration can reconnect industrial waste with the Earth’s material cycles while recovering landscapes shaped by decades of extraction. China has a large and growing stock of abandoned mines and disturbed mining landscapes (Figure 1A). A national survey by the China Geological Survey estimates that roughly 99,000 abandoned mines still require remediation.2 Demonstration projects led by natural-resources authorities indicate a shift from scattered pilots to scaled implementation; representative cases are presented in Table S4. Many abandoned pits and tailings areas are concentrated in mountainous and resource-dependent regions, often far from dense settlements. In administrative practice, they are readily framed as existing disturbed land that can be repurposed for waste accommodation alongside land reclamation. They also offer clear volumetric capacity, definable engineering boundaries for closure, and an evident need for landform reconstruction, making them an attractive setting for large-volume recovery uses of ISW. However, this pathway has not yet become a mainstream option. Its large-scale adoption is constrained by the prioritization of high-value resource recovery, the continued prevalence of simple and low-cost disposal methods, uncertainties regarding material suitability and engineering stability, and the potential long-term leaching and groundwater risks associated with direct mine-pit backfilling (see Section S2).
These pressures are global. Mining occupied 101,583 km2 of land by 2022 and increasingly encroaches on ecologically sensitive areas.3 Across China, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, Spain, the United States, and other countries, shared risk pathways include storage-facility instability, contaminant leaching, acidic or alkaline drainage, heavy-metal migration, and downstream water-quality degradation (Table S6). China is one representative case: 143 tailings storage facility failures between 1957 and 2023 caused 840 fatalities and released tens of millions of cubic meters of tailings slurry.4 Mine closures are also expanding the global restoration burden; by 2030, another 127 coal mines covering approximately 3,731 km2 are projected to close.5 Under these conditions, policy frameworks that integrate waste accommodation with the restoration of mining sites are becoming an increasingly attractive option for resource-dependent economies, offering a scalable pathway to address dual challenges.
