MCLC: Taiwan embraces recycling

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Taiwan embraces recycling
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (11/29/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/business/international/short-on-space-tai
wan-embraces-a-boom-in-recycling.html

Short on Space, Taiwan Embraces a Boom in Recycling
By CAIN NUNNS

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Twenty-five miles west of here on Taiwan’s rugged
northwest coast, a cavernous warehouse under construction represents the
new priorities for an island where the streets were once littered with
piles of discarded electronics and other refuse.

At the clean and tidy construction site, building materials are stacked
neatly and even workers’ cigarette butts are carefully collected. The
surroundings are designed to evoke a Roman villa, with lagoon, garden and
canopies. The energy-saving shade tiles are made out of old CDs, DVDs and
computer motherboards.

It is the latest expansion effort in a vast industrial park that recycles
electronics, glass, plastics, paper and just about anything than can be
reused or mined for materials. When the warehouse project is complete,
Super Dragon Technology, one of the island’s biggest recyclers, will be
able to securely store gold and other precious metals.

Trash is valuable here — the byproduct of a world now dependent on
technology. Taiwan, which is home to a host of technology companies like
Asus, Acer and HTC, produces more electronics per capita than any other
country.

“Recycling became huge because of the electronics firms,” said Chen
Wei-Hsian, the secretary general of the Formosa Association of Resource
Recycling, an industry organization. “That’s why it’s grown from about 100
recycling outfits to over 2,000.”

In 2012, waste companies had revenue of 65.8 billion Taiwan dollars, or
$2.2 billion, according to the Industrial Development Bureau at the
Ministry of Economic Affairs. That is up from 24.9 billion Taiwan dollars
a decade earlier.

With gold accumulating in its vaults, Super Dragon is even considering a
new venture, according to Ding Guo-tsuen, the company’s chief technical
officer.

“We are thinking about changing to a precious metals trading business,
because we can make pure gold at about 99.99 percent,” said Mr. Ding,
adding that the company could apply to the London Bullion Market
Association, a trade organization focused on the gold and silver market.
“We have some great inventory.”

The commercial efforts, along with a government fund and increased
consumer awareness, have helped clean up the country.

The country has one of the highest household recycling rates in the world,
roughly 42 percent, up from 5 percent in 1998, according to Taiwan’s
Environmental Protection Administration. The development bureau estimates
that the rate for industrial waste — the bulk of the country’s total — was
about 80 percent last year, amounting to roughly 14 million tons.

The industry was born out of necessity.

In the boom days of the 1980s and 1990s, factories in Taiwan made products
as varied as plastic umbrellas and high-tech electronics for the rest of
the world. As production soared, the land-poor island of 23 million people
began running out of places to dump its waste.

Mountains of fetid household waste rotted in the streets. Public and
disused spaces became dumping grounds for some of the toxic waste from the
industrial boom.

At the time, infrastructure to tackle the problem barely existed.
Large-scale, commercial waste-processing facilities were scant. Few
households recycled. And pulling valuable materials from scrapped
technology was dangerous. Wu Yao-hsun, the chairman of Super Dragon
Technology, says he believes he got cancer from the toxic processes used
to extract gold, silver and other precious metals from the country’s
discarded electronics.

“In the old days, nobody knew the dangers, they just knew there was money
inside,” said Mr. Wu, who is now cancer-free. “The environmental problems
were also huge. But the research and infrastructure were lacking. We had
to modify our own machinery.”

With trash and toxic materials accumulating, public anger simmered over
how local governments should deal with the problem. At the same time, a
growing army of social activists, buoyed by the island’s first free
presidential elections, demanded higher standards of living from a
government that had focused on economic growth at any cost.


“There were mountains of trash on the streets,” said Yeh Chun-hsien, the
president of the Chung Tai Resource Technology Corporation, a recycling
company based in Taipei. “The government had to do something.”

In 1998, the government set up a fund to encourage recycling and reduce
waste. Producers and importers now pay a fee based on the cost of
collecting and recycling 33 types of goods, like glass, plastic, paper,
aluminum containers, tires, batteries and electronics. With the money,
Taiwan’s environmental agency then issues rebates to recycling companies.

“We spend about 6 billion dollars each year on subsidies to the recycling
companies, which pay collectors, who then pay the residents. But it’s the
incentives and the public educational programs that are key for our
success,” said Lee Shou-chien of the Environmental Protection
Administration’s Recycling Fund Management Board. He added that for many
people, recycling had become “a daily habit they are accustomed to.”

The government also started the Taoyuan Environmental Science and
Technology Park, the industrial complex where Super Dragon is building its
third warehouse. The park offers incentives for recyclers of glass,
plastic and electronics that use advanced technologies and invest in
research and development to increase the island’s reuse rates.

“You are literally selling trash to people, so you have to think, who
would do that without a clear efficiency benefit?” said Arthur Huang,
founder of Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development, which designed Super
Dragon’s facility. Miniwiz, based in Taipei, is an architecture and
product design firm that turns trash, including electronic waste, into
products like cellphone cases, wine bottle holders and fire-resistant
construction materials.

Over the years, the industry, once largely made up of small and dangerous
backyard operations, has developed its own high-tech expertise.

Chung Tai Resource Technology, which recycles glass and highly toxic
chemicals like phosphorus and mercury, relied on European machinery when
it opened in 2001. Mr. Yeh said the company had since refined the
equipment to improve the process, developing a system to turn 95 percent
of the mercury and other waste from lighting products into raw materials.
Super Dragon has developed a processing technology that semiconductor
makers use to spray superthin films onto their silicon wafers.

Manufacturers have also come to realize the value in their trash.

Companies like Chung Tai, one of the island’s largest light manufacturers,
uses its own industrial waste as raw materials for new products. Others
are selling their valuable waste to recyclers.

“The electronics companies have a better idea about precious metals in
their waste,” Mr. Ding of Super Dragon said. “When the gold price jumped
to $1,800 to $1,900 an ounce, they got savvier about what they were
throwing away. They used to pay us to pick up their refuse — now we pay
them to collect it.”

The advances have spread beyond technology waste.

At the W hotel in the Xinyi District of Taipei, staff members wanted a
solution for disposal of the 300,000 plastic water bottles the hospitality
business churns through each year. Working with a group of local designers
who had been awarded grants from the Taipei city government, the hotel is
having the bottles turned into coasters, games and key- and change-holders
for use throughout the property.

“Sustainability in our business is somewhat of an oxymoron,” said Cary
Gray, the general manager at the W Taipei. “But it makes perfect sense to
use it as a way to engage our community. There’s a level of education,
awareness and social responsibility in this city, and the government is
highly supportive of creative industries. People have embraced this
culture.”