Although environmental issues were not mentioned in the hotly debated Gengche model in the 1980s, they have been bred within them. With the expansion of the scale of waste plastics industry, the problem of environmental pollution was becoming increasingly serious. Compared with the campaign governance in the form of “shutdown and transformation” of the polluting industry and the conflicts in the governance process concerned by existing studies,more attention is paid to the environmental reflection of the business owners and the social mechanism of its active transformation. Drawing on the theory of innovation diffusion and combining the characteristics of Chinese village society, the group of market actors is divided into three types: innovators, followers and conservatives. At different stages of innovation adoption, there are different actors, social networks and diffusion mechanisms that play a role. Firstly, in view of the lack of external construction power of Gengche pollution problem, the formation of reflective environmental cognition by innovators based on expert lectures, field visits, and disease experience is the original driving force for the environmental transformation of Gengche model. Innovators actively seek ways out of transformation, try the furniture e-commerce industry, and play a leading role. Secondly, the technology of furniture e-commerce industry is simple and easy to imitate, and it can be rapidly spread in the acquaintance society. Many ordinary operators become followers, and gradually form an alternative industry, which provides a buffer for subsequent motion-style environmental remediation. Finally, the “conservatives” engaged in the waste plastics industry, with the support of political, commercial and social networks, change from resistance to “cooperation” with the local government’s “iron fist control of pollution”. However, the environmental paradox in the waste plastics recycling and processing industry, that is, the negative externalities in the local area and the positive externalities in the whole area, should arouse the attention of policy research and policy makers.