The Practice: Operationalizing Circular Value

In what other areas of your daily life, apart from work, does plastic play a role?

Plastic is a necessity everywhere, from food packaging to medical safety. It was invented to replace heavier materials and bring safety to modern life. Therefore, the right question is never plastic or no plastic. Plastic itself is not the problem; the only problem is how we collect it. We must choose whether we continue with a wasteful linear system or build a transparent, circular ecosystem that keeps the material circulating.

Is there an experience that has particularly shaped your view of plastic?

Seeing the massive recycling process up close changed everything. In our facilities, we take ordinary discarded bottles, run them through automated sorting, washing, and pelletizing, and transform them into high-grade resin sold to global brands like Alpla. Plastic itself is not worthless; it becomes waste only when the system around it fails. The future of global recycling relies entirely on infrastructure, raw data, and trust.

If plastic could talk: what would it say about the way we treat it?

It would say: I was made to be useful, durable, and versatile, so why do you use me once and blame me for being thrown away? Plastic becomes an environmental issue only when we design products without considering their next life, when regional collection networks are incomplete, and when recycled materials lack industrial demand. It would urge us to treat it as a resource with responsibility attached.

Many people view plastic critically, particularly when it comes to waste. What is lost from this perspective?

We lose sight of the immense value plastic brings to modern civilization. It protects global food supplies, secures medical safety, and enables green technology. A purely negative view leads to oversimplified bans that create worse environmental burdens. We need a mature discussion focused on fixing the linear system through responsible design, massive collection setups, and accountable supply chains. In Taiwan, we have a world-class '4-in-1' EPR system enforced by the government - ranking in the top three globally alongside Germany and Japan. By placing a real financial value on waste, we incentivize residents and recyclers alike to ensure no resource disappears.

How do you deal with the negative image of plastic?

Through radical transparency, education, and immediate action. Plastic pollution is visible and emotional, but fear solves nothing. At Da Fon, we show how post-consumer plastic can be systematically recovered and safely returned to the market. We provide global brands with the strict documentation and traceability needed to make their sustainability claims completely credible.

The Outlook: Scaling Global Horizons

When you look back on your work with plastic, what do you think is often underestimated?

People vastly underestimate the extreme industrial complexity of recycling. It is not just putting a bottle in a bin; it is managing a massive Asian network of logistics, contamination control, testing, and global certification. My father started Da Fon 25 years ago with this focus on manufacturing discipline. Today, our role is expanding: I am scaling our global horizons to ensure our supply chains are fully auditable and compliant with international laws.

What challenges would the modern world face if plastic were to disappear tomorrow?

The modern world would face immediate crises in healthcare, food preservation, and logistics. Food waste would skyrocket and medical hygiene would collapse. We must be realistic: plastic solves critical practical problems. The challenge is not making the material disappear, but using it wisely, designing it responsibly, and keeping it circulating after use.

Which developments in the use of plastics will become more important in the coming years than is currently anticipated - and what role will Da Fon Environmental Technology play in this?

We are going to see massive technological disruptions in the next three to five years, driven heavily by AI and new automated sorting. The future does not belong to traditional mechanical recycling alone, but to a smart combination of mechanical and chemical recycling to achieve the best environmental outcome. Da Fon’s role is evolving to provide the vital verification and data layer for these new technologies. We want Taiwan to become the global center for quality assurance, data, and processing standards, helping international brands scale secure circular systems.

The interview was conducted by Claudia Wörner, Managing Director of yes or no Media GmbH.