Based on the characteristics of pickling wastewater in the cold-rolling production of stainless steel, a new processing route, featuring source sludge reduction, wastewater two-stage treatment, heavy metal-contained sludge and calcium salt sludge separating recovery, was proposed. As shown by the research results, after the two-stage process treatment, the effluent water can steadily reach the emission standards, the sludge yield can be decreased by more than 8% ; within the heavy metal-contained sludge, the recovery rates of Fe,Cr and Ni can either reach or surpass 95% ,and the total content of F and S can drop to around 3%. Therefore ,the sludge in the front part can be used as ferric dust. In the calcium salt sludge,the recovery rate of F can either reach or surpass 85% ,and the total contents of Fe,Cr and Ni can fall below 0.5%. So the sludge in the rear part can be used as fluorgypsum or fluorite. Meanwhile,the results of the analysis on heavy metals leaching toxicity and morphologic distribution indicate that the two kinds of sectionalized sludge are not classified as hazardous wastes, which have a stable behavior and better utilization values compared with the former mixed-sludge.