The United Nations Environment Programme has issued a clear warning: the world must move faster to combat the "triple planetary crisis" of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and of pollution and waste.

For many developing nations, this mandate raises a pressing question: How can a country with limited resources and urgent development requirements fight on three fronts simultaneously without compromising economic growth?

In March, China approved the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) and adopted its first Ecological and Environmental Code, thus reaffirming its carbon emissions peaking and neutrality goals.

Crucially, it also emphasized synergistically advancing carbon reduction, pollution control, green expansion and economic growth — a framework that recognizes these objectives not as competing priorities but as mutually reinforcing imperatives.

The logic is compelling: since pollution and carbon emissions largely stem from fossil fuel combustion, addressing them in tandem amplifies the impact while optimizing resource allocation. One policy framework. One investment. Multiple dividends.

Yet the most profound policy shifts often germinate through modest local innovations.

In Shaoxing of Zhejiang province — a 2,500-year-old city where a centuries-old winter brewing tradition transforms glutinous rice into amber-hued rice wine huangjiu through a complex fermentation process — a quiet revolution is flowing through industrial pipelines.

Rice wine brewing is an organic-intensive process. For decades, Shaoxing Nü'erhong Brewing Company grappled with the environmental ledger of its operations.

Its wastewater, while biodegradable and non-toxic, contained high concentrations of organic matter — byproducts of the fermentation process that converts starch to alcohol.

The brewery spent close to 3 million yuan ($0.44 million) annually on energy-intensive pretreatment simply to meet discharge standards.

Ten kilometers away, the Shangyu District Water Treatment Development Co., Ltd. confronted the inverse challenge. Biological nitrogen removal requires sufficient carbon sources to serve as electron donors in denitrification — the process where microbes convert nitrate to harmless nitrogen gas.

When influent carbon-to-nitrogen ratios are insufficient, operators must supplement with commercial carbon sources such as sodium acetate or glucose. The plant was purchasing these industrial-grade additives at considerable expense. For years, the two facilities operated in parallel isolation: one paying to eliminate carbon-rich waste, the other paying to acquire carbon.

This disconnect persisted until local authorities dismantled regulatory barriers that made industrial symbiosis legally cumbersome. By streamlining cross-facility permitting frameworks and establishing a collaborative negotiation mechanism between the brewery and treatment plant, the government created institutional space for what had previously been administratively unthinkable.

Since August 2025, Nü'erhong has stopped paying for pretreatment operations and now channels its nutrient-dense wastewater directly to Shangyu through dedicated pipelines.

The distillery's wastewater has become a high-quality, low-cost nutrient source for the treatment plant's bacteria.

The numbers tell a clear story: the collaboration cuts 4,200 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually and saves more than 3.5 million yuan in operational costs. What were once two separate problems — and two separate bills — are now a single solution that benefits both sides.

Shaoxing is not the only example of this symbiotic relationship. A similar story is unfolding in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.

There, Tsingtao Brewery (Jiujiang) and a wastewater treatment plant in Lianxi district have signed a contract that raises the brewery's discharge limit from the standard 500 milligrams per liter to 3,000 milligrams per liter — a legally binding agreement made possible by a 2020 revision of China's beer industry discharge standards.

The brewery now sends its high strength effluent directly to the plant, saving about 150,000 yuan annually in treatment costs. The plant, in turn, cuts its carbon source spending by half, and both sides reduce emissions. What was once a rigid, one-size-fits-all limit gave way to negotiated flexibility, unlocking mutual benefits for both enterprises.

Shaoxing and Jiujiang illustrate a broader national evolution. Similar industrial symbiotic models have emerged across China: since 2022, Jinan has encouraged breweries to supply wastewater to municipal treatment plants as supplementary carbon sources.

Tianjin's Huajing wastewater treatment plant utilized vinegar production wastewater, and saved around 7.4 million yuan in chemical costs over three years.

These parallel cases underscore that the brewery-treatment plant collaboration model is a replicable pathway, not an isolated anomaly.

In China's early industrialization phases, environmental governance relied heavily on "targeted remediation" — addressing pollution where it was most visible. That approach delivered initial gains but encountered diminishing returns as industrial complexity deepened.

The contemporary paradigm emphasizes source control and systemic integration, where interventions at leverage points generate cascading benefits across multiple environmental domains.

The Shaoxing and Jiujiang cases distill a simple but consequential insight: the sequential "treat first, decarbonize later" mentality is structurally inefficient.

The essential transition lies in recognizing that pollution and carbon are twin manifestations of linear industrial metabolism.

Addressing them through unified, cross-sectoral solutions converts environmental compliance from a cost burden into a value-creating asset. Cost savings, in turn, enhance industrial competitiveness and free capital for productive investment — indirectly supporting economic growth even when direct revenue expansion is not the primary mechanism.

This paradigm — treating intertwined environmental challenges as integrated rather than isolated — extends beyond the brewery-treatment plant dyad.

Overcoming the triple challenges facing the planet depends on our capacity to replace siloed thinking with systemic synergy. The carbon in Shaoxing's rice wine and Jiujiang's beer wastewater was always valuable; it merely required institutional imagination to unlock its worth.

Li Liping is the director of the department of pollution and GHG reduction synergization; Yang Rupu is a senior engineer; and Wang Min is a professor at the Policy Research Center for Environment and Economy, Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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