The Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) 2012 International Conference on Resource Recycling began in Taipei yesterday, with government officials from more than 10 countries attending the event to share recycling experiences.
Citing EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏), the EPA said the Zero Waste and Resource Recycling program is one of the administration’s five major policies and has been implemented through a number of schemes such as the Four-in-one Resource Recycling Program (involving communities, local government cleaning squads, recycling companies and recycling funds), mandatory recycling and sorting of waste, and the per bag trash collection fee policy.
Attending the opening event, EPA Deputy Minister Chang Tzi-chin (張子敬) said that since the Zero Waste and Resource Recycling policy began in 1999, average daily waste output had dropped from 1.1kg to 0.43kg.
This year’s conference has three main topics: Green Generation; Green Thinking and Green Economy; and Development of Sustainable Cities through Green Designs.
In addition to the various discussions taking place, there is also an exhibition displaying products made from recycled materials — such as furniture made from recycled cardboard, lightweight and low heat conduction ceramic tiles made from recycled materials, and colorful building materials made from recycled glass — that are all manufactured by companies in Taiwan.
Today’s sessions are set to include speeches on the resource recycling system of municipal solid waste in the US, Brazil, Israel, Japan and South Korea.
The exhibition is open to the public until this afternoon at the GIS Ministry of Transportation and Communication Convention Center in Taipei.
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
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
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