Recent remarks by Formosa Plastics Group (FPG) chairman Wang Yung-ching
Tucheng City has made great efforts to promote a household kitchen waste composting program since April 1999. On the one hand it is gratifying to see that our decision was right. However, I am worried that pluralistic environmental policies have not yet taken root in the central government, which has the real power.
Today, mainstream waste disposal policies are limited to incineration and landfills. Recycling and waste reduction remain slogans or cosmetic policies -- even more so composting food waste, which remains a fringe idea.
Tucheng City relies heavily on Taipei County's incinerators, entailing considerable financial pressure, including paybacks. Therefore, in 1997, the mayor made "recycling and waste reduction" a top priority.
Apart from coordinating with the four-in-one recycling project launched by the Environmental Protection Administration(EPA), the city assigned its sanitation workers to promote the composting project, targeting residential buildings. Technical assistance came from National Taiwan University professor Hsu Kuang-jung
Participating households collect their kitchen waste in special bins, which are picked up by sanitation workers at designated spots in the community and treated collectively. Tucheng's experience has shown that handling kitchen waste is difficult job, dependant on the understanding and coordination of residents.
Almost every month, we work with building management committees to arrange tenant meetings to promote the program. Other promotional methods include free supplies of kitchen waste bins and deodorants. Currently, only 300 or so households are participating.
Household kitchen waste accounts for around 30 percent of Taiwan's total garbage volume. If kitchen waste can be properly treated and recyclables such as bottles and cans (which again account for about 30 percent of the garbage volume) are properly recycled, the actual volume of waste that requires disposal will be reduced by almost two-thirds.
The problem is that the environmental authorities at all levels seem to be ignoring kitchen waste. In the absence of concrete policies, grassroots administrations are left to work out their own methods, thereby wasting their limited resources and increasing the possibility of errors.
Higher-level authorities should not sit idly by. The first year we promoted the composting project, we received a subsidy of just NT$100,000 from the EPA. Most of the time, we receive no response from the authorities -- in contrast to the attention and support received from environmental NGOs -- which makes government apathy all the more irritating for grassroots civil servants like myself and my collegues.
We hope the incoming new EPA chief will urge environmental authorities at all levels to get in touch with NGOs and learn from their zeal. We also hope the authorities will accommodate greater pluralism in environmental work.
Chiu Yeong-long is captain of the sanitation corps of Tucheng City, Taipei County.
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