Tip of the plastic iceberg
Convenience trumps the Earth. That was the thought which immediately popped into my head upon reading that the drinks retailer 50 Lan exclaimed that customers would be inconvenienced by being charged for plastic bags which previously were free (“Plastic bag rules to be extended,” Oct. 30, page 3). Walking along Taipei’s Keelung River recently, I was shocked by the amount of plastic debris of all sorts washing down the river or clinging to the shoreline.
Naturally, all that plastic ends up in the oceans and then the beaches. Plastic waste on Taiwan’s beaches has now reached catastrophic proportions (“Study finds plastic waste a pervasive problem on beaches,” Nov. 26, 2014, page 3) and even admirable clean-up activities have not made much difference (“Trash troubles continue,” Sept. 5, 2013, page 8).
Every day I am left speechless, dumbfounded and angry by the environmental savagery which is commonplace in Taiwan: people throwing trash out into the streets, illegal dumping everywhere, rivers and beaches choked with mostly plastic debris.
People continue to use plastic bags and all sorts of other ridiculous and environmentally harmful packaging once and then discard it without a second thought. In the best case, these valuable resources (now disparagingly renamed trash) are actually being recycled, but even that requires better government action (“Piles of recyclables on brink of crisis,” Feb. 22, page 1).
Too often plastics end up in landfill or worse, in an incinerator, or worse still, in nature where they choke animals to death or even, in the form of microplastics, end up in our food.
While people are to blame for throwing trash into nature, the government is even more to blame for not enforcing rules for environmentally friendly packaging and ensuring 100 percent recycling.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) promised in her inaugural address: “We will also bring Taiwan into an age of circular economy, turning waste into renewable resources” (“President Tsai Ing-wen’s inaugural address,” May 21, page 1). However, the newest government restrictions on free plastic bags will not apply to businesses like bakeries where food comes into direct contact with plastic bags. And since plastic bags are just the tip of the plastic packaging iceberg, these rules do nothing to cut down on the other more than 90 percent of plastic packaging.
Well, madame president, these kinds of policies do not represent the circular economy, they represent the throwaway society.
Seriously, do Taiwanese people and politicians still not make the connection between the use of resources, the production of waste and environmental and human health? As so often, I guess that stupidity trumps human welfare (which, by the way, is also an apt pun on the current US election).
Flora Faun
Taipei
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