Taiwan: Select plastic laws

Plastic
  • Restrictions on the Manufacture, Import, and Sale of Personal Care and Cosmetics Products Containing Plastic Microbeads (in Chinese or English

This order, adopted under Article 21 of the Waste Disposal Act, bans the manufacture, import, and sale of cosmetic products used for bathing and washing hair, facial scrubs, and toothpaste if they contain plastic microbeads.

 

  • Parties Subject to, Means of and Dates for Disposable Tableware Use Restrictions (Taipei City) (2019) (in Chinese or English)

Public entities, public or private schools, department stores and shoppig centers, hypermarkets, supermarkets, specified eating and drinking establishments and others are prohibited from providing single-use plastic tableware. The regulations list specific items (such as cups, bowlns, food boxes, etc.) banned at each type of facility. 

Lids, sealing film on paper cups, and food packaged in film for sale on racks are exempted.

The regulations also allow disposable tableware made from completely biodegradable materials or with “primary materials based on paper, wood chips, sugarcane, common reeds, hemp, rice straw, straw, rice hulls, and other plant fiber and made with plastic coating, adhesive plastic film, or other physical methods with which plastic substances can be separated, provided that the weight of the plastic contents is lower than ten percent of the overall weight of the disposable tableware minus the weight of the lid.” 

The regulations allow for use of disposable tableware under certain conditions including regional drought or outbreak of contagious disease.