The management practice and its experience for the collection and treatment of waste home appliances in Taiwan, China

Abstract

The collection and treatment of waste home appliances (WHAs) is a challenging issue in both academia and practice today. In the 1980s, a WHAs collection and treatment industry dominated by spontaneous market emerged in Taiwan, China, which was featured by small-scale, scattered and unregulated treatment activities, causing serious environmental pollution and health damage. Taiwan authorities have vigorously strengthened the industrial supervision and guidance, and basically curbed such simple treatment activities by the beginning of the 21st century. Focusing on the “Resource Recycling Fund” system implemented by Taiwan, this paper systematically introduces the management measures and implementation effect in WHAs collection and treatment industry in Taiwan, with a view to providing a reference for improving the WHAs management in Mainland China. It is argued that the success of WHAs management in Taiwan attributes to the following three important factors: (1) with the awakening of public consciousness on environmental protection and the gradual improvement of the rule of law, a solid environmental supervision system has been formed; (2) due to the improvement in the economic development in Taiwan and the rising labour costs, the labour-intensive simple treatment operations become unprofitable; (3) a long-standing pricing mechanism for WHAs collection and treatment has been established through the implementation of “Resource Recycling Fund” system.