Due to the continuing promotion of the resource recycling policy by the Environmental Protection Administration of the Executive Yuan, the national recycling rate for general waste and recyclable resources in Taiwan have reached 61.11% and 59.24% respectively. In order to further increase the total recovered amounts and recycling rate of recyclable resources in Taiwan, this project first conducted an inventory of the type of resources which can be promulgated as resources to receive prioritized recyclable resource status, and then developed the recovery and treatment strategies for 3 types of recyclable resources: old clothing, waste cooking oil, and tobacco products, while at the same time, implemented the plans for their environmentally friendly design and exchange program for second-hand goods. In addition, this project also analyzed the recycling results of the various recycling implementation organizations and proposed improvement plans for them. The implementation results for this project are summarized as follows: (1) Completed the review of inspection results for garbage bag breakage, analyzed the data on the composition of garbage, and collected the data related to the recycling status of the implementation organizations for the period of 2019-2021; proposed 4 types of waste which should receive prioritized status for recycling effort, namely old clothing, small electronics and home appliances, plastic bags or films, and safety helmets (for example, for motorcycles/mopeds), and conducted analysis for their recycling and reuse channels; conducted inventory of performance indicators for domestic resource recycling efforts, and proposed 11 indicators which could impact regular citizens the most; (2) Completed the collection of information related to 105 cases of environmentally friendly design for plastics, and electrical and electronic products; prepared 10 statements on product life cycle inventory and analysis of results (for recycling and incineration of plastic bags, paper bags and shopping bags made of different materials, fire extinguishers, safety helmets, luggage, old clothing, ceramic mugs, bicycles, baby strollers, and assistive devices; compiled 7 principles and four major indicators for environmentally friendly design; and proposed draft guidelines for environmentally friendly design of clothing; (3) Completed a nationwide survey for recycling and reuse channels for old clothing and developed a recycling and treatment strategy for old clothing; announced a guideline for recycling of old clothing by the consumers and a guideline for the executive agency entrusts private organizations or businesses to set up clothes recycling bin for management; (4) Completed the audit of recycling results and conducted the statistics and estimation for collection capacity for waste cooking oils for 2021 (3rd and 4th quarters) and 2022 (1st to 3rd quarters) and proposed promotion strategy and management recommendations applicable for domestic implementation; (5) Completed the data collection related to domestic producers and importers of tobacco products, assisted in producing explanatory materials required for business such as question and answer, tobacco products for dummies, memorandum, etc. and evaluated the feasibility of announcing the wasted tobacco products as recyclable wastes. (6) Completed the questionnaire survey and analysis of survey results related to the conduct of waste recycling, treatment and reuse by the implementation organizations in accordance with Item 6 of Article 5 of the Waste Disposal Law; and completed the on-site visits of 66 implementation organizations, and proposed the recommendations and plans for improving their recycling and reuse efforts; and (7) Completed the survey on the operation of the national platform for exchange of second-hand goods; developed the review items, indicators and rating criteria related to second-hand goods and proposed a plan to promote the implementation organizations’ efforts to strengthen their source reduction, within the framework of the performance evaluation process for implementation organizations conducing the resource reduction and recycling efforts for the 2022-2023 period; completed the system function performance improvement planning for the education platform on second-hand goods exchange system; and compiled the implementation results for the work items on the promotion of resource reuse within the 2021 Promotion of Garbage Reduction and Recycling Project (a project in which EPA would offer assistance/subsidy to local governments for their implementation).

General Waste, Resource Recycling, Environmentally Friendly Design