Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin’s (郝龍斌) campaign team yesterday attacked Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei mayoral candidate Su Tseng-chang’s (蘇貞昌) environmental protection policies, slamming Su for proposing to cancel the current trash bag policy.
In June, Su proposed canceling the city’s “per bag trash collection fee” policy because household garbage volume in the city has declined. The policy, implemented in 2000 under then-Taipei mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), requires residents to dispose of their non-recyclable garbage in designated bags, as a means to encourage recycling and reduce the amount of trash.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元), a member of Hau’s spokesperson team, yesterday criticized Su for moving trash from five dumps to Linkou (林口), Taipei County, during his term as county commissioner, creating a big garbage dump in the neighborhood.
Another spokesperson, KMT Legislator Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), accused Su of refusing to carry out the trash bag policy in Taipei County.
Thanks to the trash bag policy, she said, the average household garbage volume in Taipei City fell from 2,970 tonnes per day in 2000 to 1,009 tonnes per day last year, a 66 percent decline. In Taipei County, however, the household garbage volume only declined 22.74 percent.
“Mr Su proposed canceling a successful and effective policy, but presented no solid proposals to replace the current policy. We urge him to face the challenges and discuss campaign platforms with us,” she told a press conference.
In response, Su brushed off the criticism and said the garbage dump in Linkou handled the garbage legally, and the five previous dumps in Sinjhuang (新莊), Sanchong (三重), Banciao (板橋), Shulin (樹林) and Tucheng (土城) were turned into a riverside park for recreational use.
“The KMT should be blamed for the garbage in the five dumps, and it is ridiculous that the party tried to blame the problem on me,” Su 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:
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