Sun, Apr 05, 2026 page8

• Plastic bag shortage a misguided controversy

  • By Chang Shang-yang 張商陽
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  Some news media have recently reported on a “plastic bag chaos,” citing online posts claiming that Japan and Australia both still provide free plastic bags, and questioning whether Taiwan’s plastic reduction policies are merely an excuse to charge consumers.

  However, the issue is not whether breakfast purchases come with a plastic bag, but rather that the premise of these claims is fundamentally flawed.

  All Japanese retailers have been required to charge for plastic bags since July 2020. Convenience stores and supermarkets commonly impose a fee, with the explicit goal of reducing single-use consumption. Australia’s approach is even more direct, as regions have outright banned single-use plastic bags, requiring consumers to either bring their own bag or pay for one.

  Treating the thin produce bags in fresh food sections as representative of the entire system is not a valid comparison — it is taking one small detail and presenting it as the whole.

  Once an incorrect example is used, the subsequent conclusions are bound to be skewed. The claim that plastic bags are free abroad while they are charged in Taiwan is not a real institutional difference, but a comparison built on a flawed understanding. The discussion was misdirected before it even began.

  The “plastic bag chaos” is not an issue unique to Taiwan. It reflects broader disruptions across the global petrochemical and packaging supply chains. International reports indicate that the conflict in the Middle East has driven up the cost of petrochemical raw materials, affecting the supply of plastics and packaging materials.

  South Korea has already experienced panic buying of trash bags and packaging materials, implementing purchase limits. In Japan, packaging material shortages have impacted some food production, and India has reported shortages in medical-grade plastic materials. At the same time, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office has said that Taiwan would no longer face plastic bag shortages after unification.

  However, China’s own petrochemical sector is being similarly affected, with industries such as synthetic rubber potentially cutting output by as much as 30 percent and straining the entire petrochemical supply chain. All of these developments point to one underlying issue — the problem lies upstream, in raw materials and supply chains, not in any sudden, localized shortage of plastic bags.

  Yet, in Taiwan, the narrative has been reduced to something else entirely. The issue is being directly attributed to government incompetence. Reducing a global supply chain disruption into the failure of a single area is not just an oversimplification, but a misdiagnosis of the problem itself.

  Some are even interpreting Taiwan’s plastic reduction policies as a government excuse to collect money. In reality, the fees for plastic bags are collected by the individual retailers that sell them. Global supply fluctuations are one issue, and Taiwan’s plastic reduction policies are an entirely separate issue. Forcing the two together leads to a line of reasoning that ultimately leads to misguided conclusions.

  Chang Shang-yang is a farmer.

  Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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