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High-end foreign waste recycling benefits and large local players suffer
2020-09-21
High-end foreign waste recycling benefits and large local players suffer
Where is the rubbish, and the cleansing is at the source. Today I came to the eighth episode of the flagship feature report. In the past two years, some media reported that if Taiwan opens up foreign rubbish imports, then Taiwan may become an island of rubbish. This report is somewhat correct and some It’s not right. For example, these containers imported to Taiwan are not necessarily garbage. A very high proportion of them are recyclable and recyclable secondary materials. For example, the plastic I got is our protagonist today. , This also fulfilled a sentence. If you put something in the wrong place, it may be rubbish, but if you put it in the right place, it has the opportunity to become a resource.
There are many aspects of secondary waste recycling in Taiwan, such as secondary environmentally friendly bricks, or plastic dining tables and chairs, or even tableware, clothes on the body, etc. All aspects of entering the circular economy can be used in our lives. It is said to be everywhere, so how exactly is the journey of secondary waste, especially plastic?
Take you to Japan. Imagine that when a Japanese manufacturer is producing diapers, he will cut off a lot of corners, called scraps. The Japanese manufacturer treats it as trash, and packs it into scrap bricks. The export came to Taiwan, and Taiwanese manufacturers made it into such liposomes. The profit was very high. In the past, Taiwan imported about 200,000 tons of waste plastics from all over the world. One point in time is critical, and that is 2018.
After mainland China rejects foreign waste, these relatively high-end secondary wastes will have a chance to enter Taiwan. This is a good thing for the industry, because the cost is low and the profit is high, but every industry is like this , As long as some people benefit from it, others will suffer. For example, local recycling companies. We also see through the data that the local recycling of secondary waste, especially in the part of plastics, in 2013, the recycling price per kilogram was 8 yuan, but by 2020, only 4 yuan per kilogram of the recycled quantity is left. It can be said that the price fluctuation is described by the collapse, so the import of secondary waste is more important for Taiwan’s For local businesses or self-employed recycling businesses, it is definitely a livelihood impact.
The rumbling sound of the machine running has not stopped early in the morning. This is a factory in the Kaohsiung Industrial Zone that specializes in the production of raw plastic pellets.
Reporter Zheng Qingqing: "These are all imported by manufacturers from Japan. After the sapwood of plastic bags is broken and then decomposed, it will become a new plastic material. And these 70% of the products will become amazing for us. Of foreign exchange deposits.”
The leftover materials imported from Japan were crushed by a machine and sent to the warehouse on the second floor. The two-story warehouse was piled with snow-white light pieces. These are the raw materials to be remade later.
Li Jincheng, the owner of the plastic factory: "When we import waste plastic, we buy it from others, not garbage. We buy its resources, which means we spend money to buy it. When these waste plastics come in, it is equivalent to our raw materials. It's not rubbish, because the recycling rate of its return can reach more than 98%."
The raw materials were re-formed into plastic pellets and sold domestically or overseas. The low-key Boss Li was actually engaged in the recycling industry at the beginning. After discovering the business opportunities of secondary materials, he began to invest in this industry. He discovered that after the Chinese waste ban was issued , You can get more and more advanced recycled materials, just like this batch of diaper scraps from Japan or plastic bag sapwood.
Li Jincheng, owner of a plastic factory: "As long as all industries in the world are manufacturing, they will more or less produce so-called waste, but these wastes are not so-called completely impossible to reuse. These are materials and they are not waste. When we come back to reshape and re-granulate, it is equivalent to supplying the plastic material to the factory and using it as a raw material. It does have an environmentally friendly effect on the environment."
On October 1, 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency revised the requirement that the source of foreign waste plastics can only be a single material, a single type of plastic process scrap, or defective products, and other non-process sources.
It must be a single material and a single type, and restrict legal factories to import.
Liu Ruixiang, deputy director of the Waste Management Division of the Environmental Protection Agency: "Taiwan originally did not allow him to import waste. General industrial waste is permitted to be imported, but it must be subject to case-by-case applications and permission from the Environmental Protection Agency. In the coming years, these industries often prefer the nature of bulk raw materials. We agreed to say that they will enter customs directly, and the customs will conduct random inspections on a proportional basis."
Although Taiwan has not been involved in the Sino-U.S. garbage embargo, the global industrial chain is closely related. A large number of secondary materials that China does not collect flow into the international market. Neighboring Taiwan also gets a share of the pie. Domestic recycling of secondary materials has always been only Can provide less than 50% of the amount, which is not enough. The factories specializing in the recycled plastics industry do not hesitate to say that the ban on waste has allowed them to have more good materials into the bag, but the Environmental Protection Agency and the customs are also stricter to avoid unscrupulous manufacturers Fish eyes mixed with beads.
The global industrial chain affects the whole body, especially the fluctuation of raw materials, which affects the cost and development of the industry. Taiwan's resources are limited, 90% of raw materials rely on imports, and the regional flow of secondary materials has driven a wave of Taiwan’s recycled plastics and paper industries. The economic benefits of Taiwan also outline a new blueprint for Taiwan’s development of a cross-border circular economy.
Interview with Zheng Qingqing