Taiwanese firms benefiting from tech circular goals

Nation’s recycling collection and processing capacity is serving it well in era of sustainability targets.

taiwan flags bridge
Apple is preparing for a future when electronic products will all be made with recycled-content materials, says one cellphone supplier, so Taiwan is preparing accordingly.
Photo by Brian Taylor.

Residents of and visitors to Taiwan eyeing the abundance of collection bins can attest the nation takes recycling seriously. The entrenched focus on plastic recycling is now helping companies in that island nation become valued suppliers of postconsumer resin (PCR) to make components for some of the world’s largest computer and appliance OEMs.

An October online article from Taiwan News cites several examples, including Tainan City, Taiwan-based Chi Mei Corp., which it says has “become a first-level supplier for the six largest personal computer (PC) brands,” and that “the cases and parts used on over 10 million laptops worldwide have been manufactured with renewed materials the company supplied.”

Referring to purchases of PCR plastic as “the new norm,” the article also points to Taipei City-based Lealea Enterprise as a company supplying both Apple and Google “with renewed fibers made from disposable plastic bottles.”

According to the Taiwan News article, which also cites Business Today magazine, Lealea Enterprise is “Apple’s only designated renewed fiber supplier,” as it “provides textiles and fabrics used on Apple’s woven iMac power cords, HomePods mini and Apple Watch straps.”

Plastics producers in Taiwan are not the only beneficiaries of global circular supply chain demands. The same article points to Taiwan’s Lianyou Metals as a supplier of recycled-content tungsten to Apple and Taiwan Hodaka Technology as the supplier of a specialty aluminum alloy used by Apple made with 100 percent recycled content.

The article quotes an unnamed Taiwanese cellphone supplier as saying, “There is a team of material scientists working in Apple, studying metal and plastic renewal techniques. This is because it has predicted that electronic products in the future will all be manufactured with renewed materials, so it jumped on the chance to strategize.”

In addition to Apple, manufacturers mentioned as bolstering the PCR and recycled-content metals market in Asia are HP, Dell and Acer.

The same Taiwan News article also mentions recycling collection and reprocessing efforts in the United States and Europe and how they are tying into the sustainable materials targets of companies like Dell and Wistron Corp.

Several years ago, the People’s Republic of China was a magnet for the world’s scrap materials as its manufacturing sector converted scrap metal, paper and plastic into products made in China and shipped to the world.

Curiously, starting in 2013 shortly after Xi Jinping became Communist Party Chair, the nation began restricting and eventually banning most scrap materials, essentially enacting a blockade upon its own manufacturing sector just as multinational companies were ramping up sustainability goals and targets.

“The green supply chain is undoubtedly a major event in the next decade, and one must work to problem solve, or one wouldn’t even be able to survive, let alone do business,” Taiwan News quotes Anson Chiu, president of electronics components producer Lite-On, as telling Business Today magazine.