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EPA raises reward for whistleblowers

Environmental patrols could now make an impressive sum of money by keeping an eye out for polluters, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.

To encourage the population to report businesses that fail to pay the government recycling fees, the administration announced that the prize money for reporting such abuse would be raised from NT$200,000 to 20 percent of the total recycling fees the faulted businesses owe.

As Taiwan employs a “cradle-to-the-grave” recycling policy, manufacturers of recyclable products [such as refrigerators and air conditioners] are required to cover the fees incurred in recycling the products they make, Lin said.

“There are 14 categories and 33 types of products whose manufacturers need to pay a recycling fee for every piece of merchandise they make,” Lin said.

“However, there have been cases where a manufacturer would, say, make 20,000 refrigerator units, but only report 10,000 and therefore not pay the recycling fee for the [unreported] 10,000 units,” he said.

A group of full and part-time “reporters” has been collecting rewards by informing the government of cases involving littering, air and water pollution, or spitting betel nut juice on the street, the administration’s Recycling Fund Management board director Lin Chien-huei (林建輝) said.

With increased incentives, the administration hopes people will be more proactive in helping the government with businesses that evade their recycling responsibilities.

“Although catching recycling fee evaders is harder than catching people who litter, we believe that with the higher reward, people will spend more time helping the government monitor businesses,” Lin said.

Those most likely to hold evidence of businesses that fail to pay recycling fees, Lin said, are upper and lower-stream businesses dealing with the wrongdoer, as well as accountants and employees.

However, by increasing the reward, “the employees would no longer need to worry about being fired after they report their employers” because, based on the largest evasion case to date, a reward could amount to NT$28 million (US$870,000), Lin said.

In recent years, an average of 40 cases involving the collection of recycling fees of more than NT$10 million have been reported annually.

Reporting on them would bring a whistleblower about NT$2 million per case, Lin said.
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