Taiwan Today

Taiwan’s recycling culture and waste collection infrastructure provide a solid foundation for the implementation of circular economy practices.

Sporting white gloves, a blue cap and a well-worn apron, Tsai Yu-lan (蔡玉蘭) sits on a wobbly chair at a recycling center in Taipei City surrounded by mounds of discarded paper and empty plastic bottles. The 72-year-old grandmother tosses heavier bottles in one direction and lighter ones in another, evidently pleased with her handiwork. “Look at all this,” she said. “If we don’t recycle, what will happen to the planet?”

She is one of the foot soldiers in an army of 87,000 recycling volunteers at the Tzu Chi Foundation, a Buddhist organization that has played a key role in Taiwan’s recycling drive. Groups like Tzu Chi, as well as government regulation and public support, have helped turn Taiwan into a worldwide leader in the field. This has raised hopes that one day the country will have a truly circular economy where all waste is recycled and reused.

A few steps away from Tsai is Lin Hsin-cheng (林信政), a retiree who also lends a hand in the recycling campaign. Standing in his makeshift workshop at the Tzu Chi center, he is surrounded by discarded fans, hair dryers and radios, all in various states of disrepair. He hunts for spare parts that can give new life to these aging appliances, which eventually will be donated to the needy or sold at flea markets. “I’m still working on this one,” he said, pointing to a battered tape recorder. “It’s almost fixed.”

Core Concept

Taiwan has limited space to bury its garbage, so recycling is critical. The island recycled about 58 percent of its household waste in 2016, up from 55 percent the year before, according to the Cabinet-level Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).

While the zero waste circular economy is still a distant goal, the concept got a welcome boost from President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in her inaugural address last May. She said Taiwan would strictly monitor and control all sources of pollution, adding that the island could not afford to endlessly expend natural resources. “We will bring Taiwan into an age of circular economy, turning waste into renewable resources.”

The model has since been included in the Tsai administration’s five-plus-two innovative industries initiative, a comprehensive program to foster industrial restructuring and upgrading. This plan seeks to elevate five high-growth sectors, biotech and pharmaceuticals, green energy, national defense, smart machinery and the Internet of Things, as well as two core concepts: the circular economy and a new paradigm for agricultural development.

Charles Huang (黃育徵), chairman of advocacy organization the Taiwan Circular Economy Network, said the atmosphere toward waste reduction and reuse is changing in the country. “They are serious about it,” he said of the backers of the concept. “There is a major paradigm shift.”

He cautions, however, that the government should not be seen as the answer to all problems. “There is a lot of [circular economy] DNA in small and medium enterprises,” he added.

Jackie Wang (王家祥), founder and CEO of Renato Lab, a consultancy on recycling and new materials, shares some of those sentiments, stating that the president has helped raise public awareness. “This is a big help. Many people already feel that a circular economy is a good idea.”

He too said that government regulation plays a key role, but the market needs to accept the use of new materials. That is where his company fits in. “We try to find areas where someone can make use of someone else’s waste.”

Government Role

Taiwan has not been shy about shaping behavior through government regulation. An amendment to the Waste Disposal Act in 1988 made clear that manufacturers and importers had financial responsibility for recycling and needed to form associations that would help fund the costs.

Another amendment in 1997 scrapped the reliance on associations and put in place requirements of upfront payments to allow the government to subsidize recycling. Fees are collected on a wide range of products, from refrigerators and washing machines to cars, tires and cans. Moreover, they are adjusted periodically to take into account market changes.

Taiwan has also encouraged local groups, including businesses, nongovernmental organizations and individuals, to play a role in recycling. By law, sorting begins at home, with garbage divided into kitchen waste, recyclables such as glass and plastic, and large items like furniture. An extensive promotional campaign, starting in elementary schools, has created broad awareness of the need to recycle.

“Public education is very important,” said Harvey Houng (洪榮勳‬), an adviser to the EPA. “Kids are taught to separate household garbage and they teach their parents.”

Licensed private sector recyclers are also participating in the process. They submit bids for the right to recycle the metal, paper, plastic, glass and other materials picked up by government garbage collectors. Taiwan amassed about 7.46 million metric tons of household waste in 2016 and around 4.3 million tons were recycled, according to EPA data. The vast majority of the rest, some 3.1 million tons, was used as fuel to generate electricity at the nation’s 24 modern incinerators.

Public Involvement

Elsewhere, the public is getting involved in the recycling drive. Early one rainy morning in New Taipei City’s Limen Village, a line forms outside the local community center as the weekly collection of recyclable goods gets underway.

Residents wearing rain gear or holding umbrellas line up and push shopping carts filled with old appliances, bundles of cardboard and bags of plastic bottles or glass containers. The items are weighed and a tally is entered into an office computer where each participating household has an account.

People earn points for their recycling contributions, entitling them to free light-emitting diode (LED) light bulbs, a bottle of hand lotion or detergent, or some plastic garbage bags. New Taipei City Government donates some of these items as a small token to encourage recycling. More than 1,000 residents have accounts at Limen Village. In New Taipei City alone, there are 305 such recycling stations.

“When the weather is better people might stand in line for two hours,” said Fu Ling-yu (傅玲玉), a former village head who has been active in community affairs for some two decades. “Sometimes people line up for credit worth just NT$6 [US$0.20], but they do this because they see it as part of their daily lives.”

Industry Engagement

Industry produces a lot more waste—18.94 million tons last year—but 77 percent of it went to other manufacturers as raw material, according to the EPA. The government mandates that industry use regulated disposal companies and tracks how the waste is handled.

The island’s biggest companies are active participants in the recycling effort. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract chipmaker, said that it aims to recycle 61 percent of all waste products internally by 2020, up from 15 percent now. It is already moving to turn waste sulfuric acid into electronics-grade sulfuric acid and boasts that each drop of water utilized in its production process is used 3.5 times.

Taiwan’s China Steel Corp. (CSC), the nation’s top integrated steelmaker, said that its operations turn out 5.61 million tons of byproducts a year, from blast furnace slag to waste acid and waste refractory materials. These are used either by the group itself at the Linhai Industrial Park in southern Taiwan’s Kaohsiung City or supplied to other steel, aluminum or cement producers as raw materials.

The company also shares energy resources—steam, heat and power—in an integrated network of 14 companies inside and outside the park. CSC’s most recent circular economy project, the installation of equipment to recover iron by recycling desulphurization slag, was completed in 2015 at a cost of about NT$2 billion (US$64.5 million).

Cheng Loong Corp., a leading producer of packaging paper based in New Taipei, said that nearly 94 percent of the 1.69 million tons of raw material it uses each year is recycled paper. The company, which has been using recycled paper since 1962 and has 11 paper plants and mills, is a major supplier of shoe boxes to sportswear giant Nike Inc.

“We can’t cut trees in Taiwan and it’d be very expensive to buy all virgin pulp for our operations,” said Wu Jung-pin (吳榮斌), manager of the company’s health, safety and environmental protection department.

“When we began recycling, there was no direct help from the government,” he added. “But the government’s efforts to promote recycling have helped indirectly by making the raw materials available.”

Cheng Loong has taken a number of other steps that head in the direction of a circular economy. Sludge from the papermaking process is used to feed its steam power cogeneration system, alongside coal, waste tires, biomass and refuse-derived fuel. The company also uses solar and wind power and recovers fly and bottom ash from its operations for cement production.

Taiwan also needs to dispose of some 120,000 tons of used tires a year, and much of that is burned as a substitute for coal. But companies have found other ways to make use of this resource. Enrestec Inc. in southern Taiwan’s Pingtung County recovers carbon black for reuse in tire manufacturing while Jia Qian Rubber Tech Corp., also based in Pingtung, produces outdoor rubber mats for playgrounds using tires as raw material.

Design Dimension

While solid recycling infrastructure is in place, Huang of the Circular Economy Network said much more needs to be done. “Taiwan is good at collecting, but we need to upcycle. It’s not just a matter of making things disappear.”

Huang believes that architects and the construction sector need to focus on the concept to a larger degree in the design of new buildings. “We need to design out waste,” he said.

Other obstacles stand in the way of greater progress in putting circular economy principles into practice. Concerns over pollution and product quality have hampered efforts to recycle materials in cement production. Even in household recycling efforts, there are hurdles. “People will cooperate up to a point,” said Houng, the EPA consultant. “They won’t cooperate if you make too many demands on them for sorting.”

Meanwhile, environmental groups complain that not enough attention has been given to using household or agricultural waste to generate electricity. But that may change soon. According to officials at the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan’s 2018 budget could include an outlay of NT$1.8 billion (US$58.1 million) for three sites where methane from household rubbish would be used to produce electricity.

Despite certain shortfalls in the drive to create a circular economy, some achievements are frequently overlooked. Environmentalists like to point to the need to avoid waste and extend the lifecycles of goods in the circular economy, but little thought is given to the people involved in recycling.

In marshaling a huge volunteer workforce, organizations like Tzu Chi are helping retirees and others find self-fulfillment in a task that contributes to the public good. People like Tsai Yu-lan and Lin Hsin-cheng are discovering a new meaning to recycling, a personal recycling, in a sense. They too are gaining an extended “product” life as Taiwan moves toward a circular economy.

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William Kazer is a freelance journalist who has been covering Asian politics and economics for more than three decades.

Copyright © 2017 by William Kazer