Kitchen Waste Challenge Under the Table / End of Pig-Feeding Era: Unpacking Capacity Gaps and Forging a New Economy

【CNA Reporter Jiang Mingyan, Taipei 12th】Behind the scenes of a high-end buffet with hundreds of exquisite dishes, kitchen waste bins quickly fill up. In the past, most of this leftover food was sent to pig farms. Now, a new destination must be found.

"Previously, the heavier the kitchen waste, the more valuable it was. In the future, the lighter it is, the more money you might save," said Tsai Peng-pei, Section Chief of the General Waste Management Division at the Environmental Management Administration, Ministry of Environment, in an exclusive interview with CNA. His words capture the 'kitchen waste transformation' Taiwan is about to undergo.

Kitchen waste was once a valuable feed source for pig farmers, and some food businesses could even earn income by selling it. But with the ban on feeding pigs, the role of kitchen waste is transforming, and the resource recycling chain that relied on the pig farming industry is being rewritten.

The Executive Yuan has decided to completely ban using kitchen waste for pig feed starting in 2027, expanding to household kitchen waste in 2026, and including restaurants and other businesses the following year. The core goal of this policy is to prevent African Swine Fever.

"Disease prevention takes priority over resource utilization," Tsai stated. Even if kitchen waste has reuse value, risk reduction must be prioritized for animal disease control. In the future, methods like composting, biomass energy, and black soldier flies will be gradually adopted, with incineration used when necessary.

Based on 2024 data, Taiwan generates approximately 2,115 metric tons of kitchen waste daily. According to the Ministry's plan, the national processing capacity excluding incineration will be about 1,100 tons in early 2026, rising to 1,720 tons when the pig-feed ban takes effect in 2027, and reaching 2,119 tons by early 2028.

"Theoretically, by 2028 or even earlier, new solutions for kitchen waste excluding incineration will be sufficient to handle the entire national volume," Tsai analyzed.

These figures mean Taiwan's reuse facility capacity must double within three years. Composting will remain the mainstay, with a projected daily capacity of 1,377 tons by 2028. Black soldier fly processing capacity will triple to 237 tons. Biomass energy anaerobic digestion facilities will increase approximately 1.7 times to 505 tons.

Tsai admitted, "When the policy takes effect in 2027, there will still be nearly 400 tons of kitchen waste needing incineration or landfill, which is expected to be eliminated by 2028." The six special municipalities, with their concentrated populations and food industries, will have to rely on incineration systems during the transition due to insufficient processing capacity.

"Incineration is not an ideal solution," warned Chang Huang-chen, Deputy Director of the Commerce Development Research Institute. Kitchen waste is rich in organic matter and nutrients. Direct incineration wastes resources, and its high salt content can increase the load on incinerators, reducing power generation efficiency. The increased operational costs could ultimately burden local government finances.

Tsai said the government and local authorities have accelerated the construction of alternative treatment facilities. Examples include a high-efficiency composting plant in New Taipei City, expansion plans for the Muzha composting plant in Taipei, the Guanyin Biomass Energy Center in Taoyuan, and active promotion of high-efficiency composting, anaerobic digestion, or black soldier fly facilities in Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Hsinchu, all aiming to establish a new kitchen waste disposal system before the full ban.

"The policy direction is correct, but if implementation could be delayed by 2 to 3 years, the transition would be more stable," said a kitchen waste treatment operator, suggesting it could avoid a period of market cost chaos and reliance on incineration.

Chang believes the timeline from announcement to implementation is very tight. Besides accelerating facility construction, the government should clearly explain to the public and businesses the future destination of kitchen waste and supporting measures like dewatering and sorting to prevent misunderstandings and backlash from lack of information.

One of the most watched options in recent years is the black soldier fly, dubbed the 'kitchen waste terminator.' However, a senior food industry executive analyzed that while promising, large-scale commercialization faces challenges including pre-treatment system setup, breeding environment management, and end-product market development.

"Composting is the most mature technology but faces odor control and processing speed limitations. Anaerobic digestion can generate biogas for electricity, seen as beneficial for carbon reduction and energy, but has high construction costs and long payback periods," the executive pointed out the pros and cons of each option.

"It's unlikely a single technology will dominate the market," the operator believes. After the pig-feed ban, Taiwan is more likely to develop a diverse ecosystem of kitchen waste treatment technologies, including composting, black soldier flies, and biomass energy.

The ban has also raised significant concerns about school lunches. Local governments worry that increased kitchen waste disposal costs for group meal providers could be reflected in meal prices, affect food quality, or crowd out education budgets.

In response, Tsai suggested a more feasible direction is for schools or local governments to contract cleaning teams or legal waste disposal operators uniformly, rather than having group meal providers bear the cost, thus preventing direct cost transfer to students' meals.

Some local governments have already taken preemptive action. For example, the Taoyuan City Government's Education Department plans to budget for kitchen waste collection and tender a unified contract for legal operators to collect waste from schools daily. The Environmental Protection Bureau is seeking to increase processing capacity without increasing costs for biogas power generation.

As kitchen waste shifts from a valuable resource to a paid disposal item, food industry players point out that 'dewatering' has become a hot topic. It's not just about reducing costs but also improving backend processing efficiency, and it will gradually become a standard operating procedure in the food industry.

Chang noted that technology is not the biggest bottleneck in the kitchen waste transformation. The key is establishing a complete business model and industrial ecosystem—creating a new 'kitchen waste economy.'

"The government shouldn't just focus on how to dispose of and treat kitchen waste. It must also think about who will buy the resulting fertilizers, insect protein, and renewable energy, how to sell them, and how to create market competitiveness to help build a complete industrial chain," Chang analyzed.

"A crisis is also an opportunity." Chang believes that with pig farming no longer the endpoint for kitchen waste, the transformation will inevitably involve growing pains. The food industry will ultimately have to dance with the new 'kitchen waste economy' after the ban takes effect, and only when kitchen waste officially bids farewell to the pig-farming era can a new circular economy story begin to be written. (Editor: Chang Li-chih, Lin Shu-yuan)