Although the country has done a good job recycling Polyethylene-terephthalate (PET), with government statistics showing a 100 percent rate of recycling use, PET remains non-degradable, a local environmental protection activist said yesterday.
The most efficient way to protect the environment would be to stop using PET bottles altogether, said Chou Chun-ti (周春娣), chairwoman of the Conservation Mothers Foundation in Kaohsiung.
Chou said it was a mistake to describe PET bottles as one of the most environmentally friendly containers just because they are 100 percent recyclable.
Although PET is fully recyclable and can be used to manufacture new products such as cosmetics, high-quality carpets, plastic wrap, car parts, hypo-allergic pillow fillings and fabrics, the recycling process is energy intensive, Chou said.
Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) date showed that the volume of recycled PET was 80,000 tonnes in 2004, 81,000 tonnes in 2005, 91,000 tonnes in 2006 and 97,000 tonnes last year.
As a 600cc PET bottle is made of only 20g of PET, the 6,000 tonnes of additional PET recycled during the one-year period between 2006 and last year means that Taiwanese consumed 300 million more PET bottles during that year.
Lin Chien-huei (林建輝), an EPA Recycling Fund Management Board official, said that the more bottles were recycled, the more were being used, which was taking us further away from the spirit of garbage reduction.
Although PET bottles have been the cause of environmental disasters, they hide behind a smokescreen of environmental protection, Chou said, saying that few people hesitate to buy soft drinks in PET bottles because they know they are recyclable.
Although the EPA has done a great job in recycling, it is nevertheless wrong for the administration to not try to discourage people from using PET bottles, Chou said.
Only when the volume of recycled PET bottles is reduced to 40,000 tonnes or 30,000 tonnes a year while the recycling rate remains at 100 percent will there be “true protection of the environment,” Chou said.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift