Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday called on business representatives to join the agency’s “painless reduction of plastics” campaign to make Taiwan “a plastic-free island” within 10 years.
“Starting from January next year, 80,000 stores will stop giving out plastic bags for free, which can reduce plastic bag consumption by about 1.5 billion bags per year,” Lee told a news conference outside the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨) in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義).
Although 1.5 billion is just one-10th of Taiwan’s annual plastic bag consumption, people could help the nation become plastic-free by cutting plastic bag use by 15 billion bags in a decade, he said.
Breeze Charity Foundation chief executive officer Chen Meei-ting (陳美汀) said Breeze Group (微風集團) replaced plastic bags with paper bags at its department stores across the nation 16 years ago.
The campaign’s spokesman, actor Kuo Tzu-chien (郭子乾), suggested that the EPA increase the price of plastic bags to NT$100 each to discourage their use, while Lee said NT$1 per bag was the bottom line.
The EPA will also ban the manufacturing and import of cosmetics and detergents that contain microplastic beads from next year, while their sale will be banned from July next year, Lee said.
Lee said the plastic bag reduction plan was admired when he explained it to people in New York and Washington late last month.
At the news conference, the EPA auctioned three pieces of wooden furniture salvaged from landfill sites.
Chen, Holy Yang (楊盛傑), who is a member of the Breeze Group, and Ecomax Textile Co (富勝紡織) chairman Mark Ke (柯漢哲) bought the furniture.
Expressing his support for the policy, Ke said that in the 1990s, Ecomax was the nation’s first company to develop a method to turn plastic bottles into textiles.
Developing recycled fiber has been “a long, difficult and solitary road,” but he is glad to see the government and public engage in plastic reduction, Ke said.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
RESTAURANT POISONING? Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang at a press conference last night said this was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan An autopsy discovered bongkrekic acid in a specimen collected from a person who died from food poisoning after dining at the Malaysian restaurant chain Polam Kopitiam, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said at a news conference last night. It was the first time bongkrekic acid was detected in Taiwan, Deputy Minister of Health and Welfare Victor Wang (王必勝) said. The testing conducted by forensic specialists at National Taiwan University was facilitated after a hospital voluntarily offered standard samples it had in stock that are required to test for bongkrekic acid, he said. Wang told the news conference that testing would continue despite
‘CARRIER KILLERS’: The Tuo Chiang-class corvettes’ stealth capability means they have a radar cross-section as small as the size of a fishing boat, an analyst said President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday presided over a ceremony at Yilan County’s Suao Harbor (蘇澳港), where the navy took delivery of two indigenous Tuo Chiang-class corvettes. The corvettes, An Chiang (安江) and Wan Chiang (萬江), along with the introduction of the coast guard’s third and fourth 4,000-tonne cutters earlier this month, are a testament to Taiwan’s shipbuilding capability and signify the nation’s resolve to defend democracy and freedom, Tsai said. The vessels are also the last two of six Tuo Chiang-class corvettes ordered from Lungteh Shipbuilding Co (龍德造船) by the navy, Tsai said. The first Tuo Chiang-class vessel delivered was Ta Chiang (塔江)