Abstract: As environmental protection has become a worldwide concern, more and more enterprises, out of their social responsibilities, build recycling stations for waste collection when their productions are at the end of life-cycle. If the number of recycling stations is too large, the cost of operation and carbon emission will have to increase, while a limited number of recycling stations will lead to the increase of costs in transportation and carbon emission on the part of customers. The problem of stations distribution of waste collection in the process of recycling is studied. Considering the impact of carbon tax price on the operation decision of waste collection, the customers, recycling stations and recycling centers are taken as a system and the impact of carbon tax on the number and cost of recycling stations is analyzed from the perspective of the whole society. Firstly, combining customers, recycling stations and recycling center as a system, the energy cost, operation cost and carbon emission cost are considered, and total social cost model of stations distribution of waste collection is established. Secondly, the relationship between the number of recycling stations, carbon tax price and total social cost is analyzed, based on the two extreme cases of carbon tax price 0 and carbon tax price infinite respectively. Finally, numerical experiments are performed on the model. Our main findings are concluded as follow:(1) Considering the carbon tax cost and operating expenses or only considering operating expenses under current carbon tax price, the number of recycling stations calculated in the two cases is the same and the difference of unit total cost is not significant. That is because, the current carbon tax price is too low to have significant impact on operation. The number of recycling stations varies greatly if only considering the carbon tax cost, so increasing the number of recycling stations can reduce the carbon emissions. (2) When the carbon tax price is below 40.03, the operation decision is sensitive to the carbon tax price. When the carbon tax is over 153.1, the sensitivity is sharply reduced. The ideal price of carbon tax should be between 40.03 and 66.46. (3) The carbon emissions are optimal when the recycling stations number is 66. The conclusion can be used as a reference for enterprises to establish recycling stations, or it can be used to support the government's carbon tax policy.

Key words: low carbon, stations distribution, carbon tax