A program that provides for payments to those recycling PET bottles will continue despite its huge financial losses, the Environmental Protection Administration said yesterday.
The administration said that it will carry out a large-scale verification operation to confirm the true volume of production declared by the manufacturers of the bottles.
Administration officials said yesterday that the foundation will work with accountants and environmental bodies in August and September to verify the number of bottles manufactured in order to determine whether production levels match refund figures.
"We will verify the production number of PET bottles from manufacturers or by conducting regular inspections," said Chen Hsiung-wen (
Chen said that the project would not stop until the end of this year.
According to recent administration statistics, the number of PET bottles collected nationwide outnumber the amount manufactured.
Chen said that the unreasonable recycle rate of PET bottles -- 125 percent -- could be partly attributed to false production rates declared by bottle manufacturers.
The review of the reward aspect of the program comes in response to criticism from legislators who condemned the administration in April for failing to effectively manage recycling
programs.
As of April, all of the foundation's recycling programs had lost more than NT$2 billion, doubling their losses from the previous year.
Chen said yesterday that an immediate cancellation on existing reward measures would negatively impact garbage collectors who are responsible for collecting about 30 percent of the recycled PET bottles.
The payment given for recycling a PET bottle is NT$0.5.
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