Short on Space, Taiwan Embraces a Boom in Recycling

At the clean and tidy construction site, building materials are stacked neatly and even workers’ cigarette butts are carefully collected. The surroundings are designed to evoke a Roman villa, with lagoon, garden and canopies. The energy-saving shade tiles are made out of old CDs, DVDs and computer motherboards.

It is the latest expansion effort in a vast industrial park that recycles electronics, glass, plastics, paper and just about anything than can be reused or mined for materials. When the warehouse project is complete, Super Dragon Technology, one of the island’s biggest recyclers, will be able to securely store gold and other precious metals.

Trash is valuable here — the byproduct of a world now dependent on technology. Taiwan, which is home to a host of technology companies like Asus, Acer and HTC, produces more electronics per capita than any other country.

“Recycling became huge because of the electronics firms,” said Chen Wei-Hsian, the secretary general of the Formosa Association of Resource Recycling, an industry organization. “That’s why it’s grown from about 100 recycling outfits to over 2,000.”

In 2012, waste companies had revenue of 65.8 billion Taiwan dollars, or $2.2 billion, according to the Industrial Development Bureau at the Ministry of Economic Affairs. That is up from 24.9 billion Taiwan dollars a decade earlier.

With gold accumulating in its vaults, Super Dragon is even considering a new venture, according to Ding Guo-tsuen, the company’s chief technical officer.

“We are thinking about changing to a precious metals trading business, because we can make pure gold at about 99.99 percent,” said Mr. Ding, adding that the company could apply to the London Bullion Market Association, a trade organization focused on the gold and silver market. “We have some great inventory.”

The commercial efforts, along with a government fund and increased consumer awareness, have helped clean up the country.

The country has one of the highest household recycling rates in the world, roughly 42 percent, up from 5 percent in 1998, according to Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration. The development bureau estimates that the rate for industrial waste — the bulk of the country’s total — was about 80 percent last year, amounting to roughly 14 million tons.

The industry was born out of necessity.

In the boom days of the 1980s and 1990s, factories in Taiwan made products as varied as plastic umbrellas and high-tech electronics for the rest of the world. As production soared, the land-poor island of 23 million people began running out of places to dump its waste.

Mountains of fetid household waste rotted in the streets. Public and disused spaces became dumping grounds for some of the toxic waste from the industrial boom.

At the time, infrastructure to tackle the problem barely existed. Large-scale, commercial waste-processing facilities were scant. Few households recycled. And pulling valuable materials from scrapped technology was dangerous. Wu Yao-hsun, the chairman of Super Dragon Technology, says he believes he got cancer from the toxic processes used to extract gold, silver and other precious metals from the country’s discarded electronics.

“In the old days, nobody knew the dangers, they just knew there was money inside,” said Mr. Wu, who is now cancer-free. “The environmental problems were also huge. But the research and infrastructure were lacking. We had to modify our own machinery.”

With trash and toxic materials accumulating, public anger simmered over how local governments should deal with the problem. At the same time, a growing army of social activists, buoyed by the island’s first free presidential elections, demanded higher standards of living from a government that had focused on economic growth at any cost.