Sustainable Material Management of Industrial Hazardous Waste in Taiwan: Case Studies in Circular Economy

Chi-Hung Tsai, Yun-Hwei Shen and Wen-Tien Tsai
Additional contact information
Chi-Hung Tsai: Department of Resources Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Yun-Hwei Shen: Department of Resources Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
Wen-Tien Tsai: Graduate Institute of Bioresources, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung 912, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-11

Abstract: In recent years, the rapid economic development in Taiwan has resulted in greater complexity in handling industrial hazardous waste. The main aim of this paper was to present a trend analysis of the online reported amounts of industrial hazardous waste from the official database over the past decade (2010–2020). In addition, this study focused on the environmental policies and regulatory measures for the mandatory material resources from industrial hazardous waste according to the promulgation of the revised Waste Management Act. It was found that the annual reported amounts of industrial hazardous waste ranged from 1200 thousand metric tons to 1600 thousand metric tons, reflecting a balanced relationship between the industrial production and waste management. Based on the principles of resource recycling and circular economy, some case studies for specific types of industrial hazardous waste (including spent acid etchant, spent pickling liquid, and spent dimethyl formamide-contained liquid) were compiled to echo the government efforts in sustainable material management. In Taiwan, recycling amounts in 2020 were recorded up to 92,800, 130,460, and 54,266 metric tons, respectively. It was suggested to be a successful circular economy model in the printed circuit boards, steel/iron processing, and synthetic leather industries. In order to effectively reduce the environmental loadings and conserve material resources from industrial hazardous waste, some recommendations were also addressed to provide for the policy makers, environmental engineers and process manager.

Keywords: industrial hazardous waste; sustainable material management; environmental policy; regulatory measure; Taiwan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9410/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/16/9410/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:16:p:9410-:d:619235

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().