Taiwan’s Ministry of Environment (MOENV) announced its restriction on the use of single-use plastic cups will culminate on an outright-ban this September.
The Kinmen islands will be the last of the country’s 22 counties, cities, and municipalities to ban disposable plastic cups. In December 2022, Taipei became the first municipality in Taiwan to adopt the policy. Similar bans took effect in New Taipei in May 2023 and in Taichung in October of the same year.
The policy implementing the ban was first adopted on July 1, 2011. It includes measures to increase adoption of reusable cups like a TWD 5 (€0.14) discount for bringing your own cups, as well as free borrowing services for reusable cups in chain fast food restaurants and chain convenience stores.
The MOENV estimates that the use of disposable plastics cups has been reduced by 17% since the first bans entered into force. It predicts that about 790 million plastic single-use cups will be replaced by reusable cups or other materials or every year.
Taiwan’s popular milk tea drinks, ‘bubble tea’, have created a huge pollution problem in the country, with 4 billion single-use cups ending up in garbage dumps each year.
The reusable cup system is helping to tackle that problem, with approximately 198,000 reusable cups in circulation and around 160 million consumers bringing their own cups to drinks shops.