PLASTIC producers in Taiwan have scrambled to secure new supplies since the conflict in Iran disrupted petrochemical flows and tightened availability.
Some producers have turned to the United States to purchase liquefied petroleum gas, another petrochemical used to make plastic. Others have sourced plastic goods from China, where many Taiwanese manufacturers have long-standing relationships.
Taiwan’s main plastic manufacturer, Formosa Petrochemical, imports two-thirds of its naphtha, the petrochemical used to make plastic, most of it from the Middle East.
But in early March, the tankers carrying those supplies from the Persian Gulf stopped arriving.
The shortage forced Formosa Petrochemical to shut one of its two production lines.
The company’s production capacity has decreased about 42% from its normal level, said its spokesman, Lin Keh-yen.
The disruption has been worse than the shocks that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the Covid-19 pandemic caused, he said.
In March, Formosa Petrochemical was still able to fill orders using stockpiled inventory. There was less to go around by April.
“Of course, we also looked for alternatives,” Lin said. “But it’s impossible to buy such a large quantity.”
Even if tankers carrying naphtha resumed normal passage through the Strait of Hormuz, it would take at least a month for Taiwan’s plastic supplies to return to normal, said Jerry Pai, former chair of the Supply Chain Management Institute, Taiwan, an industry group.
But the supply crunch is already trickling down into everyday life in Taiwan.
At the Xizhou Public Market, one of the oldest traditional food markets in the Taipei area, Hung Ming-he manages a web of relationships.
He leads the organisation that runs the market and owns a nearby stall famous for its pork dumplings.
Plastic touches nearly every stage of making those dumplings.
At the butcher’s stall, Hung picked up freshly ground pork in a bulging plastic bag, while at the vegetable stand, he selected another plastic bag filled with vibrant green scallions.
At a table in the heart of the market, sheltered from rain by overlapping awnings, Hung folded dumplings with two colleagues and described how the plastic shortage had weighed on his business.
While he talked, he and his colleagues placed finished dumplings into clear plastic clamshell containers with individual indentations to keep each one separate.
The price of plastic bags and other plastic restaurant supplies had doubled from March to April, he said.
It is not just his business feeling the squeeze. Other market vendors, already working on thin margins, are hurting, too.
Yet most, like Hung, are reluctant to pass the costs on to consumers, many of them retirees with limited budgets.
Some retailers, he added, are charging three times what they did before the war for plastic bags.
His restaurant would not be able to keep absorbing the increases for much longer, he said.
“If it goes any higher, we will have to start charging customers more,” he said.
Taiwan’s plastic use remains among the highest in the world. Last year, government data showed the island used 229,008 metric tons of plastic bags, which works out to about 50 billion 4gm bags.
Some of those plastic bags may have been exported later.
Taiwan needs to do more to curb plastic use, Pai said.
“It’s destroying the environment for future generations,” he said.
Part of the reason plastic products are so abundant is Taiwan’s recycling system. Plastic is so pervasive that people don’t feel bad about throwing away a bag, bottle or utensil after a single use.
Wang Ming-yuan has run her pharmacy for 20 years.
Like many pharmacists and traditional Chinese medicine shops in Taiwan, she orders custom plastic bags printed with her shop’s name and space to write customers’ prescriptions and dosages.
When Wang placed a new order in mid-March, her supplier warned that it did not know when the order could be filled.
By April 12, she had run out. She has since switched to paper bags, though those contain plastic sleeves, and she worries they may disappear next.
“Who would have imagined how essential these things are to our everyday lives?” she said.
Wang said it is the worst supply shortage she has seen in all her years running the pharmacy.
The plastic shortage is forcing other businesses to make tough choices.
At the start of April, Yeh Pi-chiu, who manages a rice vermicelli noodle shop near the Xizhou market, started charging customers one Taiwan dollar (roughly three cents) for every plastic bag their order required.
“Anything related to plastic has gone up in price,” Yeh said.
The fee isn’t about profit, she insists, but is about encouraging customers to be more conscious of how much plastic they use.
Her noodle shop, which is festooned with cat pictures, is donating the proceeds to a local animal shelter.
A few blocks away, the supply crunch is hitting at the source.
Yu Chih-ta and his mother have spent decades running a shop that sells plastic bags and containers to small businesses, including food vendors.
Since the conflict began, they said, new shipments have stopped arriving, leaving them to sell only what they have in stock.
To stretch supplies, they have steadily raised prices and rationed how many bags customers can buy.
The shelves are lined with signs that look decades old, except for the layers of fresh price stickers pasted over one another in recent weeks.
In the corner of Yu’s shop, a television on the wall shows US President Donald Trump discussing the conflict in Iran. — ©2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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