An innovative way for recycling leftovers in Chushan Township, Nantou County, turns 100 tonnes of leftover food into fertilizer, further prolonging the lifespan of operational landfills, according to the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday.
To ease the burden of local landfills, the EPA plans to increase composting in the nation to 900 tonnes next year from last year's 300 tonnes. EPA officials said yesterday that Nantou County, an agricultural region, has proven that promoting recycling decombustables can be more than just talk.
In Chushan, where a recycling program was launched in May, 20 to 30 percent of household waste is recycled regularly through the composting plan.
"Due to recycling, the lifespan of an operational landfill can be prolonged by about 7 years," Chen Tung-mu (
According to Chen, a specially designed compost truck, costing NT$1.8 million, helped a lot.
"It is the most advanced one in Taiwan. Its two intakes are connected to pressure systems prevent odors from escaping when leftovers have been dumped into it," Chen said.
Compost is treated in a NT$3 million treatment system. Compost produced by it can be used for not only fertilizing but also conditioning soil.
Currently, soil experts from Da-yeh University (
Local environmental officials said that the collection of compost could also meet the fodder demand of pig farms. In the townships of Puli (
Meanwhile, in Shanchung borough (
According to Huang Te-fu (
Huang's team has successfully sold their experience to other townships in Nantou in the last two years. Currently, more than 2,000 families in the county produce decomposable waste in their residences.
Huang said that organic vegetables fertilized by self-produced compost was welcome because they made the vegetables taste good.
Edward Huang (
"The distributed model in Chushan is actually suitable for any remote area in any agricultural county like Nantou," said Huang Ching-ju (
In addition to leftovers, officials said, Chushan residents are also cooperating in recycling materials. The recycling rate in Chushan has increased to 18.25 percent in June from 1.24 percent in the same period in 1998.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching