Page 30 - Plastcs News January 2019

FeAtures

Becoming the leader in Recycling

Marcello Rossi

Taiwan is now becoming a global leader in recycling claiming 55 percent of trash collected from households
and commerce, as well as 77 percent of industrial waste.

n a large open space overlooking central Taipei, Arthur properties,” says Huang as he sips a coffee from a cup
IHuang hands me a translucent, honeycomb-shaped made of broken iPhone screens. “Polli-Brick is just one
polyethylene panel. Named Polli-Brick, this colorless success out of a myriad of trials and errors.”A 40-year-old
module made from old plastic bottles can be interlocked structural engineer and architect, Huang, the company’s
with others to build an incredible array of structures — CEO and co-founder, set up operations in Taiwan in 2005
such as the nine-story EcoARK pavilion, a sleek exhibition after a failed attempt in New York, where he found few
hall located a few blocks away in the heart of Taiwan’s Americans who shared his will to reduce the staggering
capital. amount of waste humans churn out every day.

In Taiwan, to his relief, he found a different story. This
densely populated island of more than 23 million off
mainland China has one of the world’s most efficient
recycling programs, claiming 55 percent of trash
collected from households and commerce, as well as
77 percent of industrial waste. According to Plastics
Technology, in 2015 more than 1,600 recycling companies
were in operation, bringing in some US$2 billion in annual
revenues.

Becoming a Global Leader
Today it’s hard to see any trash or even garbage bins
while walking through Taipei. Yet this transformation was
These bricks are among countless products that Huang hardly conceivable just 25 years ago, when the island
and his team at the international upcycling company struggled so much to clean up the waste resulting from
Miniwiz derive from post-consumer waste, turning rising living standards and soaring consumption that it
objects like aluminum cans, shoe soles and cigarette had the unflattering moniker of “Garbage Island.”In
butts into building materials and more. “Over the 1993, the trash collection rate on the island was just 70
past decade, we have experimented on over 1,200 percent — and virtually no waste was recycled. By the
different waste materials to figure out their mechanical mid-1990s, two-thirds of the island’s landfills were full
or nearly full.
It took a raft of protests and blockades to change the
situation. Faced with mounting unrest, the government
proposed erecting dozens of incinerators to burn waste.
It also drafted a new waste management framework
encouraging citizens and manufacturers to adopt
practices that result in less garbage generated.Under the
scheme, companies play an active role either by handling
their own garbage or by paying a waste fee subsidizing a
government-run fund for waste infrastructure. Taiwanese
citizens must put their mixed waste into government-
approved blue bags they purchase. By contrast,
Polli-Brick

Plastics News Januar y 2019 30