Incinerators might be popular with Taiwan's waste managers but there is little love lost for them among residents, environmentalists and legislators.
Yesterday representatives of all three groups took the opportunity of a public forum organized by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to criticize the EPA's enthusiasm for building incinerators and burning waste.
Originally the EPA planned to build 36 incinerators by 2003 intended to handle 90 percent of Taiwan's domestic waste. The building program is behindhand, but that might be just as well since the unexpected success of recycling schemes has reduced waste volumes to the extent that even if nine of the incinerators were cancelled, there might still not be enough waste to keep the remaining 27 operating economically.
"Because of the shortage of household waste, some industrial waste has been treated in public incinerators already. The situation might become worse in the future as more waste will be recycled," said Mary Chen (
Environmentalists were quick to point out that incinerators meant for the disposal of domestic waste were not necessarily suitable for the disposal of industrial waste, which tends to produce much larger volumes of more toxic by-products.
Nevertheless, according to Wu Tien-chi (
If operated at 85 percent of daily capacity, EPA officials said, all 27 incinerators could treat 21,000 tonnes of waste a day. But in 2003, however, Taiwan daily generated only 18,000 tonnes of household waste.
Activists of the Green Citizens' Action Alliance argued that the lack of trustworthy inspection on the operation of incinerators might result in burning industrial waste inappropriately.
"Worse, in the future, a price war is expected among public waste incinerators desperately lacking garbage to burn," Chen Chien-chih (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Su Chih-fen (
"EPA officials know quite well how to manage waste problems but they refuse to tackle them effectively," Su said.
Chan Chang-chuan (
"Health risk assessment, precise prediction of the amount of household waste, and a possible mechanism of regional collaborative operation of waste treatment facilities all need to be addressed more by the EPA," Chan said.
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