Beach Cleaning Event

   At a beach cleaning event, we found that there was a lot of rubbish on the beach, mostly plastic straws and paper cups. The staff of the event organizer told us that this plastic-containing garbage will break down into plastic microbeads, eventually leaving plastic microbeads on the beach and in the ocean, causing ecological damage. We were very curious about the source of this drifting garbage, so we designed a questionnaire, focusing on recycling containers.

  You can see the results in

  We found that people in Taiwan are not clear about the difference between paper containers and other types of recycling. We pursued this issue in two directions: one is how we can solve the problem of the paper cup material, and the other is Taiwan’s larger recycling issue.

Safety

   Through the survey, we knew that people care about the safety of paper container. As the result, our team had tested the acid-base tolerance of LIGGREEN to ensure our product could be used reassured.

Environmental Ethics

   The problem of recycling system still made the environmental worse. We engaging the former legislator to discuss the environmental ethics and regulations, we also checked the possible orientation in drafting the environmental regulations.

In a clean beach event, we found that there were a lot of rubbish on the beach, and most of them were plastic straws and paper cups. The personnel of the environmental protection group told us that these plastic-containing garbage will dissolve the plastic particles, eventually leaving plastic particles on the beach and the ocean, causing ecological damage. We are very curious about how these drifting garbage is caused, so we designed a questionnaire, the main content is about the consideration of recycling containers.

We got a very important information from the survey. In Taiwan, many people did not know the difference between the paper container recycled and paper recycled.
How could we solve this problem? We separated the end-up treatment of garbage into two types, one is recycling and the other is entering the incinerator, but entering the recycling system had such problems we had mentioned above, and entering the incinerator is not the best solution. Then we thought that why not let this garbage be naturally decomposed? It will not cause recovery difficulties, and will not impose too much burden on the environment.

However, to create a whole new material that can be decomposed naturally is not easy at all. After researching for a period of time, we abandoned using LIGGREEN to make the whole cup but turning to the research on lamination. How did we attach LIGGREEN to paper? We found the Bobsen paper industry to help us solved some problem on paper container lining. They have given us considerable help in conceiving the features that LIGGREEN should have and designing the production line.
The material should be pellets. Moreover, it must have melting point to be suitable for the production line and pass the SGS testing.
Bobsen told us the material characteristic and the SGS testing, which is the indicator of food safety. As we wanted to enter the raw materials markets, these should be pay attention. They also shown us their production line, which was far different from our original design:

ITRI helped us to rethink LIGGREEN structure.
In the conference with Dr. Hsieh, who is an expert in lignin research, he pointed out some question that we never thought before.
I suggest you to decrease the molecular weight to 2000~ 5000, because the molecular weight will influence the structure in lignin, a you said that LIGGREEN is a lignin-like material, I think it is also applicable to LIGGREEN.
He told us the bigger molecular weight would make the lignin structure be grid, not only make lignin hard to decompose, even worst, make the lignin have no melting point. It is same on LIGGREEN. He also told us that our LIGGREEN is different from Polyethylene or Polypropylene, we do not need to make LIGGREEN’s structure so close to them, because we were two things from basic.
This made us have a breakthrough in designing LIGGREEN structure. We originally preferred the grid to LIGGREEN, which would cause LIGGREEN hard to decompose. In the case of performance characteristics, Dr. Hsieh suggested that we can take the molecular weight at 2000~5000.

Although we have created a new approach to end-up recycling process, the actual problems in society have not been resolved. Environmental ethics issues still exist and constantly promote our reflection. Therefore, we decided to visit Taiwan's recycling industry what the problem is of Taiwan’s recycling system.

Lian Tai is the only one manufacture which had applied for using separating paper and plastic of paper containers technique, and the government in Taiwan has only recognized Lian Tai to deal with the business.
They are trying to correct people from throwing the paper containers into non-recyclable trash that were misleading by public media. The main reason lead to such result is that when the government started to promote recycling the paper containers to the paper containers industries, they told the paper production industries not to recycle paper containers anymore. The paper industries thus let their staffs refuse paper containers recycled, which made people misunderstand that paper containers could not be recycled, they should be thrown into non- recyclable trash.
From the point of view of recycling, it has increased many difficulties when the government decided to add the paper containers recycled type into recycling system. Although supports by policy has increased the amount of recycling, it increased the trouble on recycling procedure. If we cannot improve the recycling problem from origin, it seems that the problem will be no change in the day.

After the commitment with Lian- Tai, we re-examined the current environmental issues and what went wrong with the recycling system in Taiwan. Finally, we decided to conduct a policy analysis and interview with the former legislator who now prepares the county magistrate.
We have proposed the two points to discuss with the former legislator and come up with some convenient policies to improve them, the first one is about recycling system, and the second is about the food safety:

1. Recycling System
   Our recycling system has a recycling category for paper container, the government has been actively trying to increase recycling efficiency. However, when the government has called on general paper factories not to accept paper containers, they were misleading that paper containers cannot be thrown into paper but generally non-recyclable garbage.
   The problem is that everyone is too strange to the paper container recycling system, which leads to the current bias. In addition, in the process of the recycling system, although we have classified them at the beginning, after this garbage entered the paper recycling factories, the garbage that has been sorted is mixed again until the later procedures it is separated again. If the recycling system can be simplified and then remove the paper container, this may be more convenient and can be given to other countries around the world as a reference.
   
2. Food Safety
   Paper food containers and paper cups in Taiwan are managed by the Food and Drug Administration of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Laws which governing food packaging containers are the Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation, the Sanitation Standard for Food Utensils, Containers and Packages, etc. However, we believe that the existing regulations which only stipulate the food contact surface are insufficient. There are no relevant standards for outer layer of the containers.
   
   

In order to attract consumers, many manufacturers print beautiful patterns on the outer layer of paper containers. If they use printing ink made from petroleum, it will affect the health of consumers by ingestion through the hands. The US Environmental Protection Agency claims that printing inks are potentially carcinogenic.
In January 2018, the Taiwan Provincial Health Bureau admitted that because the central health authority did not specifically regulate and did not regulate the print ink inspection standards, so it could not be managed. Currently, it is only relying on the manufacturer's self-management to confirm whether the paper containers are safe.
There are three solutions. First, the Health and Welfare Department should speed up the regulation of food safety in printing ink on the paper containers. Second, requiring food industry to adopt inks which are harmless to the human body, such as water-based inks and soy inks, to reduce harmful substances and the risk of ingestion. Finally, we should give recognition to food industry who have already used non-toxic inks, and ask them to label on outer layer of containers, which reassures consumers.