Starting today, 365 breakfast shops from seven local breakfast chains in Taipei City will join more than 2,000 stores in offering discounts to customers who bring their own cups when purchasing beverages, in a bid to reduce the use of disposable cups.
Customers who use their own cups at local breakfast shops, including Mei & Mei (美而美), My Warm Day (麥味登) and Laya Burger (拉亞漢堡), will receive NT$1 discount on each beverage they purchase, Taipei City’s Department of Environmental Protection said yesterday, as it became the first city to include breakfast shops in a discount policy that aims to reduce the use of disposable cups.
The new policy, launched by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), requires fast food chains, convenience stores and beverage shops to offer discounts in a bid to reduce disposable cup usage. Stores that do not comply will be liable to a fine of between NT$60,000 and NT$300,000.
PHOTO: Lin Hsiang-mei, Taipei Times
Department commissioner Wu Sheng-chong (吳盛忠) yesterday thanked the breakfast chains for participating in the discount program and said the city government planned to encourage more stores to join the program.
My Warm Day marketing director Mike Huang (黃進賢) said the discount policy would not increase the operational costs at the firm’s stores, as they could cut down on the cost of disposable cups.
The 60 breakfast shops in Taipei City use 200 disposable cups a day, Huang said. To further encourage customers to bring their own cups, Huang said the company would sell take-away cups and offer about a NT$5 discount to customers who used such a cup
In Taipei, 2,151 stores have so far offered discounts or free top-ups to customers who use their own cups since the new EPA policy took effect in May.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater