A recent article published in the New York Times discussed how shortages of raw materials brought on by the war in Iran have exposed Taiwan’s overdependence on plastics, but observers and experts tell a more nuanced story.

Taiwan’s heavy reliance on plastics has long been a topic of interest, especially in terms of its use in consumer goods. So when a May New York Times article by Taipei-based journalists Xinyun Wu and Meaghan Tobin stated, without providing data, that plastic usage per person in Taiwan is higher than almost anywhere else in the world, the revelation might have made sense to many residents, at least anecdotally.

The article, titled “Taiwan’s Plastic Habit Collides With Shortages Caused by a Faraway War,” noted that the average person in Taiwan “uses at least one new plastic shopping bag a day, adding up to 10 billion plastic bags a year.” Major contributors to this excessive use include Taiwan’s traditional food markets, bubble tea stalls, and pharmacies, according to the report. Vendors at these spaces often go so far as to provide individual plastic bags for different items in the same purchase.

The article also argued that dependence on plastics has made Taiwan vulnerable to supply chain shocks. In response to the crisis in the Middle East, Taiwan’s plastics manufacturers have had to rapidly diversify sources for petrochemical feedstocks — including the petroleum-derived naphtha used to make plastics — which are transported via the Persian Gulf. One result has been a shift toward liquefied petroleum gas from United States-based providers. Formosa Petrochemical Corporation, a subsidiary of Taiwan’s main plastics manufacturer Formosa Plastics Group, saw production capacity drop 42% from normal levels, forcing it to close one of its two production lines, according to the Times report.

However, the article appeared to tell just one side of the story. A December 2025 report from German international public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, for example, acknowledged Taiwan’s substantial plastics use. But it also highlighted the island’s “intense recycling culture,” which emphasizes individual responsibility. Taiwan’s recycling system earned it the top ranking in Asia for waste recovery in the 2024 Environmental Performance Index, an annual study conducted by the World Economic Forum in association with Yale and Columbia Universities.  

Strong recycling performance, however, does not necessarily reduce plastics consumption.

“Part of the problem is the type of food style and culture we have in Taiwan,” says David Li, vice president of sales and supply chain at Germany-headquartered recycling company REMONDIS Taiwan. The island’s ubiquitous night markets, street stalls, and takeaways commonly serve their offerings in single-use packaging with disposable utensils. “This naturally leads to high plastic usage.”

More fundamentally, though, the issue is how plastics recycling is managed at government level, Li says. “With PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles and some other types of plastics, you’ll see the recycling mark on the bottom, which means the recycling fee has already been paid.”

That mark is an example of an extended producer responsibility (EPR) policy, which aims to make producers accountable for the environmental impact of their products through the entire lifecycle. Taiwan introduced its own EPR in 1988, one of the first countries to enshrine one in domestic law. The current system is built around the “4-in-1 Recycling Program,” which relies on cooperation among communities, local authorities, recycling enterprises, and a government-managed recycling fund. The Recycling Fund is financed through fees levied on manufacturers and importers. But the program only covers certain items.

“Unfortunately, for plastic bags, we just don’t have such a system,” says Li.

A major obstacle is the fact that plastic bags and packaging are often produced from composite materials with different functions and properties. This process can help improve overall durability or keep out moisture, oxygen, or light. But separating such composites during the recycling process can be more complex and costly than single-layer products.

But Li says the government could take a more assertive approach to resolving this issue. “If they wanted to force [manufacturers and importers] to use one type of plastic, they could easily introduce constraints to say you can only use LDPE (low-density polyethylene) to make transparent bags, for example.”

One option that is being explored, says Li, is to use composite products in agriculture. Because darker- and metallic-colored bags and packaging cannot be “unmixed” into separate colors, they are suitable for producing pellets that can be downcycled to produce ground tarpaulins or weed barriers. These opaque coverings are ideal for preventing sunlight from reaching the soil underneath, keeping unwanted plants from growing.

While plastic bags and packaging are now seen as harmful to the environment, Li points to the irony of their origin as a supposedly more sustainable alternative to paper.

“One reason plastic bags were created to was to reduce paper usage and waste,” says Li. He says that early generations of plastic bags were mainly thick, single-source products, before cheaper composites took hold. “Now they are getting thinner and thinner. You can often just use them once.”

This has led to calls for a return to paper-based alternatives. But, while acknowledging that the recycling industry has a vested interest in the continued production and use of plastics, Li says it’s not practical to rely on pure paper for many items.

“The government might insist that stores use paper, but for some items, such as paper cups, you’ll need to laminate them with PP (polypropylene),” he says, noting that the high heat resistance of this polymer is safer for handling cooked food items.

Rather than trying to limit the production of plastic products, Li says the aim should be to minimize the types of materials that are used in making them. “You can reduce the quantity, but you’ll still have a lot of the highly functional materials or composites — then it’s all waste,” he says.

Turning to the conflict in Iran and how the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz has affected Taiwan’s plastic dependency on plastics, Li says the situation is likely not as precarious as the Times article suggests.

“I don’t think it’s a big risk, as we’ve already reduced oil imports from the Middle East and increased gas from the U.S.,” he says. “So we’re not relying too much on one raw material.”

Coming full circle

One initiative focusing exclusively on reduction of plastic waste is Bottle to Bottle, a joint project between the Nature Conservation and Environmental Information Foundation (now the Trust in Nature Foundation, TNF) and SynerGood, a strategic communications consultancy specializing in issue management and stakeholder engagement. The project’s stated aim is to encourage manufacturers of PET bottles to achieve 30% recycled content (rPET) by 2030.

While Taiwan has long been a major exporter of rPET pellets, it did not permit the material’s usage in food packaging until the Taiwan Food and Drug Administration (TFDA) issued its first No Objection Certificate in 2022. Since then, the TFDA has continued to issue certificates on a case-by-case basis to individual facilities and processes in line with United States and European Union regulations.

“For a circular economy, it’s important to keep the same form and usage,” says Chen Zih-rong, director of TNF’s research and policy affairs department and a member of the Bottle to Bottle team. “Making minimum changes and keeping a bottle as a bottle means you don’t need to take it apart and reform it, gradually making the material more fragile.” 

When asked about the Times article’s assertion that Taiwan consumes too much plastics, Chen says it might be overstated. Still, she acknowledges that Taiwan can “improve quite a bit,” especially when it comes to public overreliance on single-use products. She also agrees that the ongoing supply chain bottleneck reveals a concerning dependency on petrochemicals but argues that when confronting such crises, the government often prioritizes the wrong areas, choosing to focus on things it thinks will resonate with the public.

“In Japan, they highlight the dangers of a lack of raw materials to lifesaving products, such as medical equipment, but in Taiwan we don’t talk about this,” she says. “Instead, the government says we won’t have enough plastics for food.” 

For Robin Winkler, founder of the Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association, an organization that focuses on social and environmental justice, the government has historically been too permissive of Taiwan’s powerful manufacturing sector.

Winkler, an outspoken environmental activist, cites the opening of the sixth naphtha cracker plant (where feedstock such as naphtha is heated) at the Mailiao Industrial Complex in Yunlin County as a turning point. The plant, which was approved in 1986 and developed in the 1990s on a 2,255-hectare artificial island built on reclaimed land, is operated by Formosa Plastics.  

At the time, it sought to address shortages of basic petrochemical feedstocks that the government said were limiting Taiwan’s plastics and manufacturing industries. During a 2001 visit to the construction site, then-President Chen Shui-bian “expressed admiration” for Formosa Plastics and said he “hopes that his administration can emulate the FPC’s working spirit for the country’s economic development,” according to a Presidential Office press release. But that enthusiasm was not universal.

“This was actually designated to be a coastal conservation zone,” Winkler says. “But [the government] gave it to Formosa Plastics, and that was the end of the story for Taiwan.”

He argues that decisions like these have contributed to Taiwan’s current abundance of consumer plastics and made efforts to curb their use much more difficult.

For its part, the Yunlin County Government says the complex is a strategically important national hub for energy and infrastructure. Current development of a new LNG terminal is underway at Mailiao’s southern public wharf alongside port development for the naphtha cracker complex. A 2025 safety management meeting involving government agencies and Formosa Plastics stated that the LNG terminal would be built to the highest international safety standards. The project was also framed as advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11 on sustainable cities and communities.

Still, Winkler says he hopes the current supply crunch might finally galvanize the government to rethink its approach to plastics, adding the situation could serve as an opportunity to accelerate reforms that reduce Taiwan’s reliance on plastic products.