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Air in buildings worse than air outside: expert

The air quality inside non-smoking offices is three times worse than outdoors, a Taipei-based German environment specialist said on Tuesday.

Modern construction materials and office equipment contain chemicals that are harmful, said Andreas Gursch, deputy director of the German Trade Office in Taipei.

Gursch, an expert on waste management and resource recycling, made the remarks after asking “Is your office killing you?” to employees at the Taipei County Government in a keynote speech on German green buildings and renewable energy.

Citing survey results, Gursch said that a TV set contains more than 4,000 different chemicals.

He said the county government should rent, rather than buy, durable office goods so that they can be returned for upgrades or replaced when they get too old. Through such an approach we could minimize waste, he said.

About the Taipei County Government building — a fully enclosed building that was recently criticized by Deputy County Commissioner Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻源) as being very unfriendly to the environment — Gursch said that a building should be as eco-friendly as a tree.

In addition, Gursch said that only products that can always be recycled are called “renewable resources,” not those that can be recycled just once — a concept that needs to be established in Taiwan.

People should recycle daily, including kitchen waste, he said.

Gursch praised Taiwan, however, for doing a good job recycling and said young Taiwanese children had a keen sense of environmental awareness. But he said Taiwanese adults should work harder on preserving the environment.

In 2006, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) kicked off a countrywide recycling campaign requiring local residents to sort household waste into three categories: recyclable resources, kitchen waste and garbage.

The nation’s total recycling rate has reached 36 percent, a percentage that the EPA said is higher than in the US and Japan.

Gursch said that agriculture would be the focus of the next eco-revolution, adding that local farmers’ associations should start to increase awareness.

Gursch, who has dedicated himself to protecting the environment in Taiwan over the last 16 years, said Taiwan has the responsibility to cut carbon dioxide emissions even though it is not a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol.


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