The Recyclable Resources Fund revenues and expenditures were in balance last year due to an increase in recycling rates for some items, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
However, officials noted what they called "curious" recycling rates for PET containers (保特瓶), foamed polystyrene (PS), iron, PP/PE and plastics and will pay more attention to these this year.
Last year, some bottle manufacturers were shown to have understated their production of PET bottles in order to pay less in required fees to offset the refund money paid to consumers for handing in the bottles.
According to the EPA's Recyclable Resources Foundation (
The relatively positive situation, however, has not ended the foundation's nightmare. Currently, its overall financial losses total NT$1.37 billion.
Since July 1998, when the foundation was established, continuous financial losses have sparked criticism of the EPA's strategy to charge producers and paying subsidies to collectors. A financial loss exceeding NT$500 million for the recycling of PET bottles last year is just one example.
Payment for handing in recyclable PET bottles was reduced to NT$0.5 per bottle in 2000 from a rate of NT$1 set in 1998. When the recycling policy was instituted in 1997, the payment had been set at NT$2.
Environmental officials said yesterday, however, that the situation was improving.
"Last year, the losses on recycling PET bottles decreased to NT$141 million," foundation director Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) said yesterday.
Chen said that the EPA had come up with new strategies for recycling PET bottles by adjusting fees and payments. However, Chen said, due to political turbulence created by the Cabinet reshuffle, policies with huge impacts had been put aside for a while.
"I think the new policy for recycling PET bottles will be announced soon in order to avoid a future deficit," Chen said.
In addition, Chen said that the recycling of foam polystyrene containers had resulted in a NT$141 million loss, while recycling PP/PE and plastics containers had brought a NT$62 million loss. As for iron containers, the foundation shouldered NT$35 million in losses last year.
Officials say that the losses could be attributed to the success of the program, as estimates for the recycling rates on certain items were far too conservative.
A higher-than-expected recycling rate for discarded appliances, for example, created a NT$312.2 million loss last year.
Similarly, 87.7 percent of discarded information appliances were recycled last year. The high recycling rate created a NT$78.2 million loss.
EPA officials said that Taiwan was the first country in the world to introduce the compulsory recycling of discarded information appliances, starting in June 1998.
Chen said, however, that the agency did not know where discarded computers ended up when they were not recycled properly.
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