Beginning next month, household waste will be refused by garbage trucks if it is not first separated into three categories: recyclable, food leftovers and general household waste. The new policy was announced by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) last week.
Environmental officials said that random checks of people's garbage bags will be carried out during the first months after the implementation, and residents violating the rules will be advised and encouraged to do classification on the spot. Officials said materials made of plastic, aluminum, glass and metals will have to be recycled. In other words, people have to recycle common materials such as plastic bottles, paper, clothes, tires, furniture, batteries, lamps, balls, film negatives, raincoats, wooden toys and compact discs.
According to the EPA, affected jurisdictions include Keelung City, Taipei City, Hsinchu City, Taichung City, Taichung County, Chiayi City, Tainan City, Kaohsiung City, Kao-hsiung County and Ilan County. Beginning April 1, violators will be fined between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000.
The new measures will be applied nationwide in 2006. According to EPA Administrator Chang Juu-en (
"Unwanted articles can be recycled as long as they are put in appropriate categories," Chang said.
According to the EPA, in 2001, Taiwanese produced 18,000 tonnes of household waste. Taking 2001 as the baseline year, Chang said the implementation of the new measure will reduce the amount of household waste by 25 percent in 2007, 40 percent in 2011, and 75 percent in 2020.
In addition, taking Taichung City as an example, Chang said the city first carried out a compulsory measure demanding household waste separation in 1999. The city's recycling rate has increased to 24.46 percent early this year from 8.86 percent in 1999.
Chang said that the new policy will also lead to financial profit for the government. Currently, the government pays contracted recyclers NT$1,000 for each tonne of recyclable waste.
Chang estimates that the government would benefit from selling reusable articles collected from residents to manufacturers which recycle such waste.
"We estimate that the government will make a NT$4.86 billion profit annually because of the implementation of the new policy. 30 percent of the profit will be used to reward local environmental bureaus for the waste collection and the remaining 70 percent will be used for carrying out other environmental measures," Chang said.
Chang stressed that similar waste separation policies has been adopted in other advanced countries. A recent survey done by the EPA shows that 80 percent of interviewees support the new policy.
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