With the rapid development of e-commerce platforms and new products in China, however, the scrap products such as waste paper, used home appliances and scrap metals that come with them are accumulating in cities, affecting the environment and hygiene. Today, scrap collectors often drive electric tricycles aimlessly to carry out scrap collection. The vehicle path planning is a pressing problem in the recycling process of scrap products from user location points to sorting centers. In order to solve this problem and minimize the cost consumed in the recycling process, this paper solves and analyzes the actual problem based on an improved genetic algorithm, combined with GIS technology. Firstly, based on the characteristics of the scrap recycling process, the shortest path is solved based on GIS software, and then the spatial and distance information such as user location points and sorting points are combined to construct a GIS network to obtain the shortest path. Secondly, this paper establishes a vehicle path planning model for the sorting center considering factors such as actual scrap collectors’ commuting and service time. Then, an improved and optimized genetic algorithm is designed, and then the model is solved. Finally, the solved optimal path of scrap collection is displayed in GIS software. In this paper, the effectiveness of the method is demonstrated by taking Guilin city as an example.