In response to environmental regulations to be enacted by EU countries, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) yesterday launched two initiatives -- "Green Project" and "GP User Group" -- to help establish a management system for electronics makers wanting to build green supply chains.
"By combining government and private resources, I believe we can help local manufacturers to weather the crisis and turn the challenge into an advantage," Minister of Economic Affairs Ho Mei-yueh (何美玥) said at yesterday's launch.
The ministry wants to help manufacturers meet two EU environmental directives -- the Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) and the Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS).
Under the WEEE directive passed by the EU in the end of 2002, brand-name electronics producers have to dispose of and recycle their own products tossed out by consumers, starting Aug. 13.
The RoHS directive will ban six different substances, such as lead and mercury, from electronics products but it does not take effect until July next year.
Both directives will mean considerable costs for the 35,000 local companies that make or sell products in the EU with an average output value of NT$240 billion per year, Ho said.
Through the two initiatives, the ministry hopes to establish examination and authorization standards for products and components, and an information platform for green products and parts for suppliers, the minister said.
The ministry has said it wanted to include more than 1,000 electrical and electronic manufacturers meeting EU standards by the end of next June.
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"We hope made-in-Taiwan will become a synonym for green products in the near future," he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy