Current Situation of Reusable Packaging in Taiwan’s E-commerce Industry

Reserach Abstract

According to EPA (Environmental Protection Administration), the domestic logistic industry is growing yearly in a rapid rate, from 27 billion NTD in 2012 to 32 billion NTD in 2016. In 2020, the total revenue of E-commerce industry in Taiwan reached 297 billion NTD, which can be assumed that over 100 million packaging boxes were used for logistic industry. The waste created in the logistic industry, such as packaging materials, wrapping materials, buffering, and taping, has caused serious problems to the earth environment.

Issues such as oversized plastic waste in ocean, and the risk of running out of landfills, are drawing people’s attention toward sustainable packaging around the world. Increasing online shopping using e-commerce platforms, due to consumers’ changing shopping preferences as well the prevailing pandemic of Covid-19, the problem of oversized package waste has been taken seriously in many countries. The United States, the European Unions, and countries from the United Nations, have conducted several guidelines to deal with this issue. Taiwanese government is also making some efforts tackling the problem, such as launching out reduction guidelines and labels, and collaborating with several e-commerce platforms and PackAge+, a company of packaging industry, trying to find out a feasible business model through the EPA pilot plan. It seems that both Taiwanese government and PackAge+ want to find a suitable framework that can successfully be applied to the very unique e-commerce situation in Taiwan.

In the presentation, I will introduce the reduction guidelines in Taiwan and also highlight some points in three interviews with EPA (Environmental Protection Administration), MOEA (Ministry of Economic Affairs), and PackAge+.

孫珮慈

研究團隊:產業鏈與永續治理