12/28/2019 Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle - The News Lens International Edition

2018/01/24, Environment

Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle

Photo Credit： shih-chen yang CC BY-SA 2.0

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Nate Maynard

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A slurry of protests, policies and payments eliminated Taiwan’s waste problems.

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Walking around Taipei, one seldom sees trash or even trash cans. Instead you might see people
washing plastic bottles, carefully sorting computer parts and families waiting with blue trash bags for
the nightly garbage trucks.

This trash transformation is a recent phenomenon. In 1993, Taiwan had a collection rate for trash of
just 70 percent. That meant 30 percent of Taiwan’s waste entered the environment either through
littering or burning.

Fed up with rampant illegal dumping, people demanded change, with the then Kaohsiung mayor (and
now KMT chairman) Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) facing the brunt of the public's ire. In just 20 years Taiwan
transitioned from an island on the brink of a waste apocalypse to a global leader in recycling.

Today, much of Southeast Asia and the rest of the economically rising world grapples with similar trash
challenges. Indonesia just invested US$1 billion into stemming the ow of plastic pollution into the
ocean after being named one of the worst contributors to ocean plastic. The rest of the world fails to
stem the tide – they halfheartedly use plastic bag bans, educational programs, and a mix of other

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programs without addressing the underlying causes. Yet, looking at Taiwan, it’s obvious what drove
not only a dramatic increase in recycling but a massive decline in waste production.

Credit: REUTERS/Nicky Loh

The EcoArk building, built for the Taipei International Flora Exposition in 2010, was constructed using 1.5 million plastic
bottles instead of bricks to raise interest in recycling.

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12/28/2019 Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle - The News Lens International Edition

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) and Pay As You Throw (PAYT) schemes were introduced, as
well as public education. These strategies together decreased waste production from 1.08 kg of waste
per person per day in 2001 to 0.86 kg per person per day, almost eliminating the need for land lls.
What made this shift possible, and can other countries adopt this model?

Land ll protests

In 1993, Taiwan had a collection rate of merely 70 percent; with little information available on
recycling at the time, we can assume the actual recycling rate for waste material was much lower. By
2000, Taiwan achieved a recycling rate of 18 percent, yet produced more than two times as much
waste as it did in 2016. From the early 90s to the early 2000s, protests, government actions and
responses from the public shaped a waste management policy largely focused around reduction and
recycling.

Why did Taiwan have a trash problem? Researchers and development institutions have found that
GDP growth and increased consumerism correlate with trash production. The dark side of prosperity
is waste. As incomes rise, populations grow due to healthcare gains, people move to cities, and garbage
proliferates.

Infrastructure takes time and political will, something dif cult to arrange during economic booms.
Looking at the countries that contribute most to plastic pollution (India, China, the Philippines,
Vietnam and Indonesia), we see a common trend of rapid economic success and rising populations.
Eventually, people demand more than just dollars.

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12/28/2019 Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle - The News Lens International Edition

Eliminate Food Waste Onsite

Stainless Steel Construction

The LFC is an aerobic bio-digester that sits in the kitchen and eats waste
food.
powerknot.com

OPEN

Residents in Taiwan protested industrial land lls or other waste dumping sites for years, but the trash
conversation reached national attention in 1990 with the Hsichingpu Land ll (西青埔垃圾掩埋場)
demonstration. The Kaohsiung City government continued to use the land ll even though the lease
had expired; residents responded with a 37-day blockade of the land ll site. The city government
ended the protest by promising to build modern waste incinerators. These incinerators would not
come online in time, causing further backlash and protest.

By 1996, due to excessive waste generation, frequent protests and blockages, Taiwan was running out
of land lls; nearly two thirds of land ll of Taiwan’s land lls were approaching capacity or already full.
In the face of such an overwhelming problem, the newly created Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) proposed building incinerators instead of land lls to reduce con icts and waste.

Waste incinerators were met with their own erce protest. The EPA planned to build 36 new
incinerators across Taiwan, but ended up only building 19. With high upfront costs and a ve-year
build time, slightly longer than an election cycle, well organized community groups could easily stall
projects. It wasn’t hard to convince the public burning garbage next to your home would impact your
health.

Since the public opposed land lls and incinerators, the government had few choices. Finally, after
almost a decade of waste protests, the legislature passed a new recycling and waste reduction scheme.

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Responsible production

In 1998 the Legislative Yuan amended the Waste Disposal Act to include and prioritize recycling and
waste reduction while also introducing an extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme. An
amendment in 2001 gave the EPA the authority to audit and certify products and operations under the
scheme. Across the world, academics, governments, NGOs and even industry acknowledge the critical
role EPR plays in reducing waste. The schemes require manufacturers or importers to pay a small fee
for creating or importing products; this fee then goes into a fund managed by the government to
develop waste management infrastructure or recycling industries.

Taiwan’s EPA manages the Recycling Fund Management Board (RFMB). The executive secretary
divides responsibilities based on waste type across ve sections, with a sixth section for general affairs
and management. The fund started by dealing with aluminum plastic or paper containers before
moving on to more complicated products like batteries, uorescent lights, motor vehicles and nally
information technology equipment.

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12/28/2019 Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle - The News Lens International Edition

Data: Taiwan EPA

Through this expanding product coverage, the fund collects NT$7 billion (US$240 million) per year
from the EPR scheme. This fund develops new recycling projects, for example developing industries
and processes for recycling truck components. A portion of the fund also goes to educational projects
to inform citizens how to recycle and to encourage them to recycle less common objects like
lightbulbs, appliances and computers. Most countries with successful recycling rates or programs and
have some type of EPR to manage their waste — simply look across the European Union and the UK.
This, combined with legislation that bans certain types of waste from the land lls, incentivizes
industry to create products that are easily recycled and reduces waste at the production level.

While recycling can divert a portion of the waste from land lls, the total volume must come down as
well. EPR thus draws down waste in two ways – by forcing industry to pay into a fund to resolve the
waste and to incentivize manufacturers to create easy-to-recycle products. Ease of recycling matters
doubly when you can recycle for free but have to pay for your waste.

Pay as you throw

Charging for waste disposal, typically called a “pay as you throw” scheme (PAYT) reduces total waste
output by citizens and industry by creating a nancial penalty for producing garbage. In 1991, Taipei
City experimented with waste fees by charging residents for water, assuming that if residents used
more water they also created more waste. Failing to reduce waste, Taipei decided to start charging for
waste by volume in 2000.

When the program rst launched, clever citizens tried to dispose of their waste in public trash cans.
This resulted in nes, removal of public trash cans and educational programs to discourage this
practice. Shortly after launching the program, residents complained that they had to dispose of too
much food waste, raising the costs substantially. The city quickly responded with a food waste
composting system in 2003 that allowed residents to freely dispose of organic waste. This policy came
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six years before San Francisco’s food waste composting law, yet few outside of Taiwan know of this
achievement.

Since the launch of PAYT, per capita waste generation in Taipei fell 31 percent in 15 years from
1.26 kg per person per day in 1997 to 0.87 kg in 2015.

Since the launch of PAYT, per capita waste generation in Taipei fell 31 percent in 15 years from 1.26 kg
per person per day in 1997 to 0.87 kg in 2015. The nancial penalty drove recycling, increasing
recycling rates from 2 percent to 57 percent. While Taipei adopted the scheme rst, a similar trend
was seen across Taiwan. Taipei city boasts the highest recycling rate in Taiwan of 56 percent thanks to
the PAYT and EPR schemes.

Today, Taiwan incinerates less than it did in 2000, despite a peak in 2007. In fact, many incinerators
around the island operate well below capacity. Land ll use, which once almost threatened to take over
the island, decreased 98 percent. Today, Taiwan produces more recyclable waste than unusable waste
and makes consistent progress towards a “zero waste society.” Imagine if other cities learned from
Taipei’s success.

Lessons from the incinerator

Before one gets too excited, remember that reality seldom operates as cleanly as it appears in
government reports. Taiwan Watch Institute claims that the EPA in ates the amount of recycling by
not including electronic waste or waste from private contractors. They also noted a gap of 1 million
tons of waste claimed for incineration.

This type of sobering criticism drives better waste policy. If it wasn’t for the courage of communities,
especially the Homemakers United group, Taiwan would not have any recycling today. However, it’s
important to keep this achievement in context.

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Sweden made headlines when it announced it recycled 99 percent of its waste. Yet in reality it only
diverts that amount from land ll, incinerating nearly 50 percent of its garbage and recycling only 33
percent.

Across the world, countries scramble to nd new recycling options as China restricts waste imports.
The EU, for example, exports half of its sorted plastics, with 85 percent going to China. These examples
highlight the complications of waste reporting and statistics and to place Taiwan’s achievements in
context.

Further, while Taiwan has its challenges, at least the island has its own recycling supply chain and can
truly process much of the waste it creates.

Taken together the lesson remains clear, charging for waste disposal and developing an EPR scheme
drives down waste production, builds infrastructure and increases recycling. Importantly, Taiwan
wasn’t as wealthy as Japan or any European country when it began this waste scheme, but it did end
up building a multi-billion-dollar recycling industry while cleaning it’s streets.

Mysteriously, political commentators, NGOs and academics remain confused about what to do next.
They claim that countries need time to develop and earn more money or that EPR limits industry.
Looking at Taiwan, or even Japan and South Korea the answer is obvious – EPR and PAYT together x
trash problems without unmanageable costs and spur innovation.

From trash on the streets to a booming recycling industry, serious progress was made over a very fast
period. With plastic production ever increasing and GDP growth clearly correlated with waste
production, new rising economies will begin to drown in waste. While GDP correlates with waste
production, it doesn’t correlate with recycling. Developing a circular economy is a question of will, not
means.

Taiwan shows us that when faced with rising waste any country can still develop a successful waste
management policy.

The world looks to the Netherlands, Germany, and the rest of the EU to learn recycling, yet these
countries had decades to improve. Wouldn’t the Philippines, Indonesia or Vietnam have more to learn
from Taipei than Berlin?

Editor: Morley J Weston

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12/28/2019 Taiwan’s Waste Reduction Miracle - The News Lens International Edition

Tags ：
Recycling • Waste Disposal Act • Environmental Protection Agency • Extended Producer Responsibility • …

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