In this chapter, an evaluation survey of the proposed improvements is presented.
In order to objectively assess the adequacy of the improvements, questionnaires targeting people in all fields, including potential customers of WPC, has been conducted. The distribution was carried out in late April, and the collection took almost three weeks. As well as the previous one, the questionnaire was created using Google Form, and distributed through social media and email. The four improvements were introduced before some questions were asked (see Appendix 2).
5.2 Questionnaire
5.2.1 Respondents’ Attributes
A total of 50 people from various fields took part in the questionnaires.
Figure 5. 1 Ages of the respondents from the three regions
Looking at their ages, it can be seen that the majority are younger people aged 26 to 35, and the number of participants gradually decreases as the age increases (Figure 5.1).
In terms of gender, male participants account for about three-quarters of the total, so the results of this questionnaire can be said to reflect the views of young men in particular (Figure 5.2).
5.2.2 Results and Interpretations
Regarding the future use of WPC, almost 90% of the respondents answered
“yes” or “maybe” (Figure 5.3). It is worth noting that the percentage of answers
“maybe” exceeded “yes", indicating that majority of the respondents are still hesitant to use WPC in the future, even with the proposed improvements.
Generally, the four aspects: texture, environmental friendliness, cost, and design flexibility, seemed equally important to all the respondents (Figure 5.4).
Figure 5. 2 Gender of the respondents from the three regions
Specifically, the majority valued “texture,” while “environmental friendliness”
seemed less important for considering building materials.
Figure 5.5 shows the correlation between awareness and future use of WPC.
The result indicates that those who knew of the existence of WPC want to use it
Figure 5. 3 Future use of WPC
Figure 5. 4 Important aspects of WPC
in the future more, although the p-value was 0.35 which implies there is no significance between different answers.
From the above, it can be said that the four improvement points are equally promising, and it is essential to improve the texture. However, the skeptical attitude toward the improvement of environmental friendliness by the new distribution system could be read, so careful discussion shoud be necessary before the consideration of its implementation.
Figure 5. 3 Correlation between awareness and future use of WPC
5.3 Interview
5.3.1 General Information
In this chapter, a survey conducted to objectively explore the feasibility of the proposed improvements will be presented. Two interviews for WPC
manufacturers were implemented, in face to face and through a video call.
Taiwanese manufactures were chosen as samples for both interviews, because the results obtained from this survey would be applicable to the other two regions, since the Taiwanese data were mostly between the ones from the other two regions in the two questionnaire surveys. The first manufacture (from now on referred to as “FM") is one of the leading WPC manufacturers who has invented the idea of high-performance wood-alternative. The second
manufacturer (from now on referred to as “SM") is the only manufacturer in Taiwan that recycle their products, as described below. They are also known for having global partners in the EAP region.
5.3.2 Results and Discussions
As a raw material, PE, PP, and PVC were commonly used, while PS was rarely used by both two manufacturers. FM mainly used recycled PP and PE, whereas SM used virgin PVC. Instead of using virgin material for manufacturing WPC, SM often recycle their own products after their service life. In the recycling process, the abandoned products are collected and crushed into small pieces, and then the final products are shaped without any additives or chemicals.
However, regardless of the types, plastic materials seem locally unavailable since China restricted exports of recycled plastics due to pollution problems. So it is common for Taiwanese WPC manufacturers to import plastic materials from technologically advanced countries such as Japan, South Korea, or China.
For instance, FM usually lies in a stock of compressed recycled plastic bricks from Japan because it is hard for them to procure them locally or from China, since there are no regulations to deal with pollution issues in Taiwan. For the above reason, there are almost no local suppliers of recycled plastic bricks or particles there. Another issue they claimed is that the government does not seem to have any regulations to guarantee the quality of recycled plastic materials.
On the other hand, wood materials seemed to be readily available for the WPC producers in Taiwan, as both two manufacturers said they usually obtain it locally. For example, FM’s primary source of wooden materials are local furniture factories that provide furniture waste such as wood shavings obtained during the manufacturing process of furniture (Figure 5.6). Not surprisingly, the wooden materials are almost free if an annual contract is in place. However, in return, the materials have to be picked up even if the WPC producer does not need them anymore.
Figure 5. 4 Example of wood shavings (Source: WORLD EXPORT COMPANY LIMITED)
Table 5.1 shows the list of the common sources for the plastic and wood fiber used in some WPC products in the U.S. Although the use of recycled plastic looks dominant, it was clarified that this is only possible in technologically advanced regions, as SM stated. Under such circumstances, the question of whether it is still economical to continue importing plastic materials for technological developing regions such as Taiwan and Vietnam still remains.
The wood:plastic ratio that the two manufacturers adopt slightly differ; FM adopts 40:60 whereas SM mixed 30% to 40% of wood content. As shown in table 5.2, the ratio is generally around 50:50 in the U.S., and it is technically possible to blend the lower proportion of plastic content than that of wood.
Moreover, since the ratio of 70:30 was suggested as an optimal wood:plastic ratio on the properties of WPC (Chen et al. 2005), it could be said that the two Taiwan’s WPC manufacturers adopt a relatively large portion of plastic content.
However, the author also stated that plastic content contributed to decrease moisture content, water absorption and thickness swelling of WPC products, increasing its density and blending strength. The increase of dimensional stability was also confirmed when the plastic content ratio increased. Since the
Table 5. 1 List of common sources for the plastic and wood fiber used in some WPC products in U.S. (Source: Winandy et al. 2004)
above positive effects are advantageous for the humid climate in Taiwan, it is no wonder that the two WPC manufacturers use a large portion of plastic to
produce their products.
Nevertheless, increasing plastic content ratio can mean increasing the costs of the WPC products. As FM confessed, the price of plastic materials is roughly ten times higher than that of wood materials; thus, the material costs highly depend on the price of plastic materials. For the above reason, many WPC producers have been attempting to reduce the proportion of plastic content, and the latest cutting-edge technologies will potentially make it possible to reduce it up to around 20%, as FM prospected. The idea of reducing the plastic content ratio goes against our intention, but it does lead to lower costs of final products.
Therefore, the continuous pursuit of searching for the most optimal wood:plastic ratio from the perspective of not only costs but also environmental friendliness or material property incorporating the latest technologies is crucial.
Regarding improving the texture of WPC, FM provided a valuable insight that it seems nonsense to regard WPC as “a material wanting to be wood” because they are fundamentally different materials with their own features. Hence, the
Table 5. 2 List of some WPC products in U.S. (Source: Winandy et al. 2004)
manufacturer disagreed with our first proposal to make the texture of WPC as close as possible to natural wood, arguing that it is essential to emphasize WPC’s unique characteristics without comparing it with wood. However, it is inevitable for WPC manufactures to make their products look like wood since not a few customers still prefer the wood-like texture, although there are various types of WPC products, including the one with anti-bacterial coating or rubber, all of which imitates wood.
In contrast to the texture, WPC’s environmental friendliness does not seem to attract the attention of customers, since it is skeptical even for the manufacturers.
SM has argued that most WPC products seems not as durable as advertised because PE or PP are commonly used for their production to reduce material costs. WPC is generally said to have a useful life of up to 30 years (Renshaw 2014), but the actual service life of distributed products is considerably short (3 to 5 years), and there are even products that are inferior in both price and quality to natural wood. It might still be eco-friendly considering its recyclability, but the recycling of used WPC products is not encouraged since the recycling technology of processing WPC is not mature enough in Taiwan at the present stage, and the quality of recycled WPC products cannot be guaranteed under the current market system.
In order to improve theses situations and make people aware of the environmental friendliness and the low life cycle cost of WPC, our second proposal: new distribution system seemed reasonable from the eyes of SM. As they suggested, the whole system should be driven, supported, or monitored by the local government, but at the present stage, WPC is not included in waste recycling system at least in Taiwan. So SM operates their recycling system all
by themselves; thus outsourcing is necessary, and it is not easy to centralize it.
However, as they expected, it is still possible to propose the government to adopt some regulations to make WPC producers bear the responsibilities for recycling the used products that have reached their service life.