To promote the reduction of packaging used for consumer products, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday advised the business sector on how to wrap its products in an eco-friendly way.
"Though packaging is an important marketing tool for businesses, it is short-lived and designed to be thrown away," director-general of the EPA's Department of Waste Management Ho Soon-ching (
Ho said that since the enactment of Excessive Product Packaging Restrictions in July, 2005, the administration estimated that 6,900 tonnes of packaging materials have been saved annually.
This year, in addition to reinforcing regulations, the EPA is inviting businesses who are awarded by the EPA for their effective yet eco-friendly packaging to share and inspire other businesses to package their products using "green" -- or eco-friendly -- methods, Ho said.
"Green packaging means you minimize packaging material, reduce the printing area and colors, and use recyclable, eco-friendly materials," Hou Hsiao-pei Packaging Design Studio director Hou Hsiao-pei (
Sustainable Environmental Technology and Management Co. general manager Chen Chih-ku (
He cited the EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive, published in 1994.
Chen said that since the policy was adopted, the UK, France and the Czech Republic have established compulsory laws for eco-friendly packaging.
"The UK has already penalized six companies whose products were in violation of the packaging laws," he said.
"Once the trend spreads more widely to other EU member states, Taiwan's export products to European countries will be affected," Chen said.
"The EU model will be a good reference point, but I hope that more businesses will make efforts to put their minds together and work out sustainable packaging models for Taiwan." he said.
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
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
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