Taiwan News talks circular economy with MINIWIZ in a trash-wrapped classroom

 

Taiwan News

Apr 22nd, 2022

 

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — MINIWIZ founder and CEO Arthur Huang (黃謙智) sat down with Taiwan News in a classroom the company built with recycled materials to talk about its goals of promoting a circular economy.
 

MINIWIZ, which stands for the slogan, “It is wise to minimize,” was born when Huang and his team asked the questions, “How can we design things more sustainably?” and “How can we build a building with the least amount of carbon footprint, the least amount of toxicity?”
 

Huang said that although the world can benefit tremendously from building long-lasting buildings with ubiquitous materials, that has not been how the architecture industry or society as a whole worked. After some investigation, Huang realized the most ubiquitous material available in an urban settings is trash.
 

The team thus began studying trash and became angry when it discovered the reason why people dump trash carelessly without any thought of transforming it into something useful. According to Huang, there is a disjunct between industry and reverse logistics, leaving no party to cover relevant costs and no one to be held responsible.
 

He said the team turned its anger into a momentum that led to the establishment of MINIWIZ.
 

One major problem the company has had to tackle was matching its business scale with the scale of the circular economy. “The scale of trash is so big, so dynamic, so chaotic; and then you have a demand, so large but so uniform,” said Huang.
 

The solution — the market that allows these completely different “characters” to meet — was architecture. “Architecture is diverse; nobody wants (the) same space everywhere,” said Huang.
 

MINIWIZ thus developed the Modular Adaptable Convertible Ward (MAC ward) in partnership with the Fu Jen Catholic University Hospital, which aims to transform buildings and underutilized space into general, intensive care, or isolation wards as needed. The MAC ward’s design is optimized for quick shipping and assembly and uses eco-materials for environment, social, and governance (ESG) compliance.