Environmental organizations yesterday applauded moves to block a plan to ship hazardous industrial waste from Taiwan to the Solomon Islands, but other waste issues are far from resolved.
The EPA said on Tuesday that it would refuse to issue an export license for the planned shipment of 3 million tonnes of industrial waste to the Solomons in an effort to preserve Taiwan's image.
"This sends a clear signal to waste traders that their waste is not welcome here in the Pacific," a Greenpeace media release said yesterday.
However, another case involving Formosa Plastics Corporation (台塑關係企業) and the shipment of toxic waste to Cambodia in 1998 has not been resolved.
Although environmental officials with the Kaohsiung County Government assured the public that more than 4,000 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste that was rejected by Cambodia would be treated by the end of this month, environmentalists now worry about a way to deal with left-over residue.
Officials said yesterday that the residue has been examined by the National Institute of Environmental Analysis under the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and classified as non-hazardous waste, which may either be reused as material for producing tiles for construction use or dumped in landfills.
"We believe that the company will choose the best way to treat the estimated 2,400 tonnes of residue and that the government will monitor the follow-up," Tsai Mong-yue (蔡孟裕), deputy director of Kaohsiung County's Bureau of Environmental Protection, told the Taipei Times.
Once the treatment of mercury-tainted waste is complete, Tsai said, it would be a good time to publicize the news to eliminate long-held public misunderstandings.
Formosa Plastics was involved in a controversy pertaining to the illegal dumping of hazardous industrial waste in 1998, when it shipped 2,700 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste under the label of construction waste to Cambodia.
Cambodia succumbed to international pressure and shipped the waste -- along with the soil it had contaminated, totalling 4,600 tonnes -- back to Taiwan in 1999.
Environmentalists at that time criticized the company for lacking social responsibility and took aim at the government's loose management of industrial waste. Activists with the Green Formosa Front (台灣綠色陣線) even filed a lawsuit against Formosa Plastics and the waste handler involved. The case has not yet been resolved.
In the wake of the international scandal, the company installed a heat-recovery system early last year at its factory in Jenwu County (仁武), Kaohsiung County, and began to treat the unloaded 4,107 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste in September.
According to environmental inspectors who visited the factory yesterday, the remaining 300 tonnes of waste would be treated in the following days.
"We feel that Formosa Plastics has been doing the job with sincerity and hopefully they will treat other similar waste with the same attitude," said an environmental inspector, who declined to be identified.
At the Formosa Plastics' factory in Chienjen (前鎮), Kaohsiung City, about 1,200 tonnes of mercury-tainted waste has been stored for at least 15 years.
The official, however, said that Formosa Plastics should reinstall the heat-recovery system at the site in Chienjen to avoid any controversy resulting from the transportation of hazardous industrial waste from Kaohsiung City to Kaohsiung County.
RSS