Global Sustainability Through Zero Waste
Taiwan Panorama 台灣光華雜誌
Feb 8th, 2022
The major domestic outbreak of Covid-19 in Taiwan in 2021 triggered a sharp rise in demand for intensive care wards.
At the same time, however, global shipping had come to a halt, and building materials were in short supply. Miniwiz Co., Ltd., a Taiwanese firm that upcycles consumer and industrial waste into construction and consumer products, sprang into action by collecting huge quantities of local medical waste and turning it into safe and useful new products. In just ten months, Miniwiz designed and built 40 modular isolation wards, the first of their kind in the world. Miniwiz calls its new product “MAC Wards” (modular, adaptable, convertible wards). And because the 40 units fall far short of meeting demand, the company has made it possible to quickly dismantle, ship, and reassemble the MAC Wards in new locations in configurations that meet varying functional requirements.
Six have been designed as isolation wards. They are specially fitted out for use as intensive care units, and have passed inspections under the most rigorous of medical standards.
The EcoARK, a nine-story-tall pavilion used as the main exhibition hall for the 2010 Taipei International Flora Exposition, afforded Miniwiz CEO Arthur Huang an opportunity to take a first decisive step in guiding his company toward his ultimate goal of a “toxin-free, zero-waste future.” Then the MAC Ward demonstrated that Miniwiz’s technologies had come to maturity. Huang set his sights on converting the construction industry—which uses more raw materials and generates more carbon emissions than any other industry in the world—into one that features low consumption of materials, low carbon emissions, and an aesthetic design sense. Introducing a circular waste cycle into the construction and interior decoration industries, which are the most voracious consumers of materials, amounts to getting the entire nation pulling together to protect the environment and make waste useful. The result is reduction of waste and the establishment of a circular economy.
Who will safeguard the future?
The CNN program Call to Earth has described what Miniwiz does as “one man’s mission to make treasure out of trash.” Huang states: “Mankind’s desire for more than what is necessary for survival has created extreme consumption, rapidly turning waste and carbon emissions into an existential threat to the global ecosystem.” For example, the phenomenon of “fast fashion” has resulted in unbelievable quantities of used and unsold clothing getting dumped in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert, polluting over 105,000 square kilometers of land.
Arthur Huang appears prominently in Going Circular, a documentary by Off the Fence, the team that produced the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher. Going Circular, which premiered at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in 2021, offers a detailed picture of the technologies developed by Miniwiz and some of the projects they have completed in Taiwan and around the world. It explores the economic benefits and possibilities of recycling and reuse, and calls on the entire world to take action on carbon reduction.
We want to “turn consumers into recyclers.” In the documentary, Huang proposes a sustainable solution to world leaders: “We need to do away with the linear economy, and move toward a circular economy.”
A global perspective
Taiwan is the source of the greater part of the technologies used by Miniwiz. “Taiwan has very strong R&D capabilities. We have obtained invention patents for our processes. To turn recycled materials into new materials, you need people with expertise in many different fields.” Huang had originally intended to pursue his dreams in the United States, but in the end he came back to Taiwan, where he built a team to bring his ideas to fruition.
“Miniwiz thinks outside the box regarding the reuse of materials. In an effort to fundamentally resolve the problem of waste, we’ve headed off in new directions that no one has ever taken before.” All the things he’s done to resolve various difficulties over the past 17 years have yielded unexpected breakthroughs. “After you ‘renew’ material, if the material is only suitable for a single function, then you haven’t really achieved a renewal loop. So my team and I started thinking about how to maximize the functionality of different materials.”
When talk turns to the resilience and ingenuity of the Taiwanese people, Huang shows a sense of pride: “That is why, with all the successful resource renewal projects that Miniwiz has completed in countries all around the world, the core technologies have always been developed in Taiwan.” And the accolades pouring in from around the world affirm that “Taiwan can indeed take the lead in bringing about a circular economy.”