Environmentalists and the Env-ironmental Protection Agency (EPA) were at odds yesterday over the upcoming ban on plastic bags and utensils.
While the EPA defended the policy, environmental activists argued at a public hearing that banning plastic would result in a new problem -- a paper problem.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
According to the EPA, the new policy banning plastic shopping bags and disposable dining utensils from July would encourage more environmentally-friendly behavior from consumers and would not hurt the fortunes of the plastic industry.
Environmentalists, however, said that the last thing they want is to see paper become the replacement of choice for bags and utensils, as studies show that even more pollutants would be created -- not by their disposal but by their production. That combined with the additional waste paper should give EPA officials pause over the consequences of the new policy.
In February, the EPA announced that starting July 1, retailers at certain locations would be prohibited from offering customers free plastic shopping bags and disposable dining utensils.
The new regulations would affect publicly operated grocery stores and restaurants at government buildings, public and private educational establishments and military organizations.
Officials said yesterday that the second stage in carrying out the policy would begin Jan. 1 next year. Places affected will include department stores, supermarkets, convenience stores, fast food stores and those with shop fronts -- almost every type of retailer, barring street vendors.
Statistically, Taiwan consumes 65,000 tonnes of plastic annually for producing shopping bags and 59,000 tonnes for disposable dining utensils.
If the policy is carried out, EPA officials believe that consumers will consume 30.8 percent fewer shopping bags and 37.7 percent fewer disposable dining utensils by the end of 2003,
"One-and-a-half years after the policy's implementation, plastic manufacturers are expected to consume 36,000 tonnes less of the raw materials required to manufacture plastic, accounting for 3.5 percent of the existing [plastic production] market in Taiwan," Environmental Protection Administrator Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said at a press conference yesterday.
Hau said that the idea behind the policy of banning plastic is to encourage people to abandon habits of using disposable products and condition industry into producing fewer plastic products.
According to the EPA, people tend to discard thin plastic bags and re-use thicker ones. For this reason, plastic bags with a thickness of less than 0.1mm will be totally eliminated. Bags with a thickness exceeding 0.1mm, however, will will remain available, but people will have to pay a fee at the checkout counter.
Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文), director-general of the EPA's Bureau of Solid Waste Management, said that store owners who violate the policy by offering free bags or selling the wrong thickness of bag would be fined a minimum of NT$60,000 and face a maximum penalty of NT$300,000, according to the Waste Disposal Act.
Considering the existing models of consumption in Taiwan, EPA officials said, plastic materials used for packing meat, fish, vegetable, medicine and other products directly from factories would be exempt from the ban.
At a public hearing held by the EPA yesterday, environmentalists criticized the agency for its reluctance to ban the use of paper products, which look destined to replace plastic products.
"The EPA will only turn plastic waste into paper waste if it doesn't also ban the use of paper products," said Eric Liou (劉銘龍), secretary-general of the Environmental Quality Protection Foundation (環境品質文教基金會).
EPA statistics show that 20 percent of the nation's garbage is plastic, far higher than in many other developed countries.
In addition, citing studies by National Taiwan University, environmentalists argued that the process of producing paper dining boxes consumes 24 times more water than that used to produce plastic dining boxes.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,