A total of 1.52 million recycled plastic bottles used to build a pavilion at the Taipei International Flora Expo will be taken apart and sent to elementary schools nationwide to raise environmental awareness, the building’s sponsor said yesterday.
The Far Eastern Group, commissioned by the Taipei City Government to build the EcoARK — a boat-shaped exhibition hall made of PET bottles — said it would work with the Ministry of Education to distribute the bottles to 100 elementary schools for “green use.”
Schools that were damaged by Typhoon Morakot in 2009 will be given priority, group chairman Douglas Hsu (徐旭東) said.
He said all the honeycomb-shaped PET bricks used to build the EcoARK will be reused in creative projects so local communities can join in on the environmentally friendly action.
For instance, he said, the bricks can be reassembled into bus stops, greenhouses, galleries or even sheds for keeping livestock.
“Since the bottles were collected from the public, we think it is best that the materials go back into the hands of the people,” Hsu said.
The group said the inspiration for EcoARK came from the large number of PET bottles recycled in Taiwan every year — about 90,000 tonnes.
EcoARK, also known as the Pavilion of New Fashion, attracted more than 2 million visitors at the expo. It was featured on the National Geographic Channel’s Megastructures, which was aired in 168 countries in 34 languages, with an estimated audience of 370 million.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS