The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) announced yesterday that recycling of mobile telephones and compact discs (CD) will be enforced beginning on Monday.
The EPA said that mobile phones and CDs must now be handed to garbage collectors when people bring out their household waste.
If mobile phones or CDs are found among normal household waste, violators will first be given a warning.
Fines
Repeat offenders, however, will receive a fine of between NT$1,200 (US$36.87) and NT$6,000, EPA officials said.
According to local media reports, statistics show that 1 billion CDs are used in Taiwan every year, but many consumers are not aware that CDs can be recycled.
A test recycling project for mobile phones and CDs initiated by the EPA in 2004 in the cities of Taipei, Kaohsiung and Keelung, as well as Taipei, Taoyuan, Jiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Yilan and Penghu counties, was not a complete success according to the report.
EPA officials were reported as saying that recycling rates are quite low when compared to sales volumes because CDs are generally kept, unless stored data loses its validity or information can no longer be burned onto them.
The report said that even though replacement rates for mobile phones are fairly high, consumers are normally reluctant to discard old but functioning phones, and chose to either keep them or sell them back to telecom companies.
EPA officials further said that mobile phones and CDs have a recycling value and are considered general waste, the handling of which is specified in Article 5, section 6 of the Waste Disposal Act (
In other related news, a research laboratory at Far East College announced yesterday their latest achievement in the development of CD recycling technology.
Chen Chia-hsun (
Chen said that more than 1 billion CDs were used every year in Taiwan, with most of these eventually winding up in refuse dumps.
If the polymer composite in CDs is recycled, it could be used again in items such as car bumpers, mobile phones and laptop computers.
Efficient
Chen said that by combining microwaves, supersonic waves and a low density alkaline fluid, the new technology was able to peel down metal layers on CDs more efficiently and cost-effectively.
After removing the metal layer, the remaining polymer composite can be crushed into small particles and subsequently used in the manufacture of other commodities.
Chen said that if all 1 billion CDs were recycled, the extracted polymer composite would have a market value of between NT$500 million and NT$700 million.
"[It could prove] quite profitable for any recycling company," Chen added.
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