A motorist parks his car on a road in Tainan City, gets out and leaves the engine running. A remote-controlled model car with a miniature windmill attached on top sneaks up behind the idling car's exhaust pipe to measure the carbon dioxide emission, while an environmental inspector monitors and records data from a distance with the help of a video camera.
At a separate location in Tainan City, a factory illegally discharges wastewater into a river. A pair of volunteer environmental patrollers take note of the violation, inform city police and prosecutors who arrive to gather proof and arrest the factory owner.
The two scenarios outlined are award-winning environmental protection ideas from Tainan City's Environmental Protection Bureau. Winners of the competition, sponsored by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), were announced yesterday.
The windmill and remote-controlled car is Tainan bureau's award-winning innovation in the “Existing Policies” category to catch drivers who leave their cars idling for more than three minutes but do not turn off their engines, bureau director-general Chang Hwang-jen (張皇珍) said.
“After we introduced the policy that motorists must turn off their engines when they leave their cars idling for three or more minutes, we tried several ways to capture proof of drivers failing to do so,” Chang said.
After several experiments, the city came up with the gadget, Chang said.
With the help of the video camera, the bureau has issued 55 tickets in the past year to environmentally neglectful drivers.
“Many other countries have promoted the idea of turning off car engines when drivers temporarily park their cars, but no measuring equipment had been developed to catch drivers who violate this policy,” Chang said.
“When we used this equipment to issue the first ticket in this category in Asia, Japan's NHK television channel came to interview us,” Chang said
In the “New Ideas” category, Chang's team came up with the idea of combining the bureau's inspectors with the police and the city prosecutor's office to catch illegal waste dumping.
“Factories are generally unintimidated by environmental inspectors; however, they are afraid of police and inspectors,” Chang said. “We persuaded the police and prosecutors to work with us and so far it has improved our success rate in catching illegal dumping.
Other winners include Taipei County, which placed second in the New Ideas category for promoting a low-carbon eco-tour in Pinglin Township (坪林),where tourists walk or bike along the Jingualiau River (金瓜寮) and are offered local and organic foods.
Kinmen County won second place in the Existing Policies category for re-organizing its botanical garden, which has attracted three new types of insects to the park.
Taiwan has received more than US$70 million in royalties as of the end of last year from developing the F-16V jet as countries worldwide purchase or upgrade to this popular model, government and military officials said on Saturday. Taiwan funded the development of the F-16V jet and ended up the sole investor as other countries withdrew from the program. Now the F-16V is increasingly popular and countries must pay Taiwan a percentage in royalties when they purchase new F-16V aircraft or upgrade older F-16 models. The next five years are expected to be the peak for these royalties, with Taiwan potentially earning
STAY IN YOUR LANE: As the US and Israel attack Iran, the ministry has warned China not to overstep by including Taiwanese citizens in its evacuation orders The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday rebuked a statement by China’s embassy in Israel that it would evacuate Taiwanese holders of Chinese travel documents from Israel amid the latter’s escalating conflict with Iran. Tensions have risen across the Middle East in the wake of US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran beginning Saturday. China subsequently issued an evacuation notice for its citizens. In a news release, the Chinese embassy in Israel said holders of “Taiwan compatriot permits (台胞證)” issued to Taiwanese nationals by Chinese authorities for travel to China — could register for evacuation to Egypt. In Taipei, the ministry yesterday said Taiwan
Taiwan is awaiting official notification from the US regarding the status of the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) after the US Supreme Court ruled US President Donald Trump's global tariffs unconstitutional. Speaking to reporters before a legislative hearing today, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said that Taiwan's negotiation team remains focused on ensuring that the bilateral trade deal remains intact despite the legal challenge to Trump's tariff policy. "The US has pledged to notify its trade partners once the subsequent administrative and legal processes are finalized, and that certainly includes Taiwan," Cho said when asked about opposition parties’ doubts that the ART was
If China chose to invade Taiwan tomorrow, it would only have to sever three undersea fiber-optic cable clusters to cause a data blackout, Jason Hsu (許毓仁), a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislator, told a US security panel yesterday. In a Taiwan contingency, cable disruption would be one of the earliest preinvasion actions and the signal that escalation had begun, he said, adding that Taiwan’s current cable repair capabilities are insufficient. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) yesterday held a hearing on US-China Competition Under the Sea, with Hsu speaking on
RSS