EPA hopes to stave off criticism with recycling review

In response to criticism from legislators that its plastic bottle recycling program has incurred massive financial losses, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA, 環保署) promised yesterday that a comprehensive review of the policy would be carried out immediately.

Legislators said yesterday that the EPA has failed effectively to manage recycling programs, citing the PET bottle (保特瓶) recycling program as an example. The program, run by the administration's Recyclable Resources Foundation (資源回收基金會), has lost more than NT$2 billion to date, doubling its losses since last year.

Independent legislator Eugene Jao (趙永清) yesterday questioned EPA head Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) about the problem. In addition to financial losses incurred from recycling PET bottles, Jao said that the foundation was facing additional losses of NT$10 million from its polystyrene (保麗龍) recycling program.

Hau said that the administration's officials recognize the problem and that a task force would be established immediately to review recycling policies. Hau also vowed to reverse the situation by the end of this year.

Starting in 1992, the foundation has recycled used bottles with a per-bottle refund of NT$2. In 1997, it reduced the refund to NT$1 and in March last year decreased it again to NT$0.5.

The series of adjustments, however, failed to remedy the losses incurred by the program.

According to recent EPA statistics, the number of PET bottles collected nationwide far outnumber the amount manufactured. The foundation's officials suspect that some dishonest merchants could possibly be importing the bottles from abroad in order to cash in on the refund policy.

Additionally, some of the bottle manufacturers have reportedly understated their production in order to pay less in required fees to offset the refund money paid to consumers by the EPA.

The fees are determined in proportion to a manufacturer's total bottle production.

The officials said that they also suspect some manufacturers of teaming up with retailers to exchange bottles for refunds that were never sold to consumers to pocket the money themselves.

The EPA estimates the number of PET bottles manufactured every year in Taiwan is about 268 million.

Despite its current financial difficulties, the foundation says the program still has promise. According to the EPA, the raw materials produced from recycling the bottles are in high demand in countries such as the US, China, Japan and South Korea.

The officials said that Taiwan currently has more than 600 stations for recycling PET bottles and that nine treatment companies can produce 4,200 tonnes of raw material from the used bottles.