Taiwan’s pledge to increase its national circularity rate by 2.5 times by 2050 compared with 2020 levels sets an ambitious regional benchmark, yet the inaugural Asia Pacific Circular Economy Roundtable & Hotspot (APCER 2025) in Taipei underscored a significant, persistent challenge: a prevailing industry mindset that still conflates circularity with mere waste management.
Experts from Japan, India, and Australia critically noted that the current focus across many Asian economies remains too narrowly centered on recycling, neglecting the broader, systemic interventions required for genuine material-cycle sustainability.
This limited perspective, which University of Tokyo Professor Shinsuke Murakami described as failing to expand the concept beyond traditional waste infrastructure, directly clashes with the complexity of transitioning six critical sectors identified in Taiwan’s draft roadmap: textiles, biomass, plastics, architecture and construction, high-tech and electronics, and energy and critical materials. The scale of this transition demands systemic solutions that integrate small businesses and consumers, moving beyond the simple collection and processing of end-of-life materials. This necessity for an integrated approach validates analyst Carlo Delantar’s assessment that if the circular economy framework can achieve scalable success in Taiwan, it validates the model’s viability across highly diverse global economies.
Crucially, the next phase of Asian circular policy is being defined by advancements in traceability and financial disclosure. Japan is pioneering this technical evolution, having introduced the Battery Passport—a QR-based system for tracking batteries through their lifecycle to facilitate reuse and recycling. Furthermore, the launch of a Digital Product Passport (DPP) platform, utilizing blockchain to record product data, signals an intent to mandate supply chain transparency across value chains. Taiwan’s Ministry of Environment is explicitly looking to Japan’s forthcoming regulations for photovoltaic (PV) waste recycling as a core model, driven by the domestic projection of approximately 50,000 metric tons of decommissioned solar panel waste by 2032. The prioritization of such high-volume, high-value waste streams illustrates the pivot from generic waste policy to technically focused critical materials management.
Meanwhile, other regional economies are formalizing the financial accountability of sustainability performance. In Australia, the approval of the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (AASB S1 and AASB S2) now mandates that entities disclose sustainability-related risks and opportunities that could materially affect their financial position (with S2 being mandatory). This regulatory shift integrates sustainability risk into core financial strategy, contrasting with India’s technological approach through its Waste-to-Wealth Mission, which focuses on deploying innovative technologies to derive value from waste streams.
