Analysis: How Taiwan Deals With 'Enormous' Amounts of E-Waste
As a major tech hub, Taiwan's electronic manufacturing produces a lot of e-waste. We speak to Armin Ibitz, associate professor at the Wen Zao Ursuline University, on what can be done about it.
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00:00 What is the status of electronic or e-waste in Taiwan at the moment?
00:05 Taiwan is one of the key players when it comes to electronics and also of course exporting electronics.
00:12 This comes of course also with a high usage of electronics also within Taiwan,
00:17 which means the volumes of e-waste is quite enormous and it's growing.
00:21 So among all the volumes of waste, for example, e-waste is normally topping.
00:27 So we see that recycling facilities and recycling by itself is not really catching up with the production.
00:35 So we talk about some kind of a gap of the generation is succeeding the recycling facilities by a factor of five or something,
00:44 which is quite difficult.
00:47 Is Taiwan doing enough to deal with this issue?
00:50 I think Taiwan has done quite a lot through its recycling management system, I would say.
00:58 But I would say the secondary raw material market is one of the key issues here, which we need to focus.
01:06 So as long as you get substances, maybe from chemical processes, get out of the materials and out of the electronic waste,
01:17 another question is whether you put it in.
01:20 So it starts from the design.
01:22 Taiwan is, of course, a key player in also designing electronics.
01:26 So if Taiwan could, how to say, act up to its role, I would say this would be not only beneficial for Taiwan,
01:34 but also for the whole supply chain.
01:37 What can be done at the consumer level to reduce Taiwan's enormous amounts of e-waste?
01:43 I think one of the key things is awareness, awareness of the problems we are facing here.
01:49 We go shopping and I would expect that most of the consumers do not think of how to dispose the product at the end of life.
01:59 This is simply not on our list when we buy something.
02:03 Also during the operation time, for example, which means it would need more energy.
02:08 So one key aspect of increasing circularity is for sure informing and providing information for the consumer on the consumer side.
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