What happens to a household appliance when it’s reached the end of its service life? One appliance dismantling plant in Taichung shows just how much material can be recycled from your old refrigerator.

At the appliance disassembly plant in Taichung’s Waipu Green Energy Ecopark, one man’s old AC unit is another man’s treasure. From cleaning and dismantling to sorting, every step relies on human judgement; dismantling, whether by hand or via robotic arms, also requires knowledge and skill.

At this facility, 900 to 1,000 metric tons of discarded household appliances can be recycled annually, with as much as 90 percent converted into recyclable materials. The key to such a high recycling rate lies in the sorting technology.

The electronics recycling plant operator explains that if you want to extract maximum value from the plastics, copper, iron, and aluminium used to construct appliances, you must find a way to separate them as cleanly as possible.

Considering the complexity of reverse engineering, the operator says designers should be thinking about recycling from the very beginning. This complexity calls for a dedicated dismantling line for each type of appliance.

This company was first founded in 1997 as an appliance recycling business. Many of its shareholders are appliance retailers who recognized that selling appliances comes with a responsibility to recycle them. In keeping with global trends in the circular economy, the company invested another NT$10 billion (US$316 million) last year to further develop plastic recycling and remanufacturing production lines. 

Through these efforts, old refrigerators, televisions, and other common household appliances are paving the way to a more sustainable future.

Hanna Bilinski, Rti News