Taiwan's Resource Circulation Administration is pressing industrial cooperation with Japan on electronic waste and critical metals recycling, after a circular economy forum hosted in Tokyo last week by the Ministry of Environment brought together government and business operators from both countries.

The forum, which the administration described as a platform to promote Taiwan-Japan industrial collaboration, put four material streams at the center of the agenda: plastics, textiles, vehicles and metals. Resource Circulation Administration official Chen Chun-jung told reporters in Taipei on Friday that those four streams are the priorities for the development of Taiwan's circular economy and formed the key topics of discussion at the Tokyo event.

Japanese Councilor Keiichiro Asao, a former Japanese minister of the environment, told the forum that boosting resource efficiency and supply chain resilience through a circular economy is particularly important for countries with limited natural resources like Taiwan and Japan. He pointed to the rapidly growing second-hand market as evidence that circular business models can generate commercial opportunity, not just environmental benefit.

Asao said he expects Taiwan and Japan to jointly promote industrial cooperation on recycling of electronic waste and critical metals, and to build a resilient resource supply chain amid intensifying global competition for resources.

Why e-waste leads the agenda

Asked why electronic waste sits at the forefront of the bilateral cooperation, Chen gave a material-stream answer: e-waste contains rare and precious metals that neither Taiwan nor Japan possesses domestically. Taiwan depends on imported metals for industrial production, and recovering those materials from consumer products would help build a local raw material supply chain, he said.

The two economies currently occupy different positions in the same processing chain. Japan holds more advanced techniques for processing waste materials into usable resources. Taiwan can extract intermediate products such as copper oxides from waste, Chen said, but cannot refine them further for direct use in industrial production. The result is a one-way trade: waste-to-source products are often exported from Taiwan to Japan for further processing and refining.

That division of labor defines the cooperation opportunity. For Taiwanese industry players, visits to circular economy businesses in Japan provided lessons in material and equipment acquisition and in pollution control within production processes, Chen said.

Business models on show

Taiwanese operators at the forum presented business models across urban mining, textile-to-textile circulation and low-carbon diaper recycling. Japanese companies shared their experience with end-of-life vehicle recycling — one of the four priority streams the administration has flagged for development.

The forum also surfaced a new policy instrument on the Japanese side. Japan formulated the Circular Economy Action Plan in April, Chen said, which carries a budget subsidizing imports of recycled materials for use in the Japanese circular industry. For Taiwanese processors exporting semi-refined materials to Japan, that subsidy structure could deepen the existing trade flow — or, if bilateral cooperation transfers refining capability to Taiwan, redirect it.

2050 net zero framework

The Resource Circulation Administration said it would continue to deepen cooperation with Japan and other international partners to meet 2050 net zero targets by jointly building what it called a resilient and sustainable circular economic system.

The administration has not announced specific projects, tonnage targets or investment figures from the Tokyo forum. What exists so far is a prioritization — plastics, textiles, vehicles and metals — and a stated intent to move e-waste and critical metals cooperation from discussion to industrial practice.

The next milestones to watch are concrete ones: whether the Taiwan-Japan cooperation produces joint facilities or technology-transfer agreements in metal refining, and how Taiwan's processors position themselves under Japan's April Circular Economy Action Plan and its import subsidies for recycled materials.