A restaurant owner in Greater Tainan was fined on Monday for using styrofoam containers, the first time the municipality’s Environmental Protection Bureau had issued such a fine since it banned all polystyrene styrofoam products in December last year as part of its effort to create a low-carbon city.
Bureau officials fined a South District noodle-shop owner, surnamed Lin (林), NT$1,200 after she failed to respond to a warning ticket issued on April 3 for using the banned containers within a two-week statutory period.
“The warning ticket clearly stated that recipients must make the necessary changes within a two-week span or they could face a fine ranging from NT$1,200 to NT$6,000,” Environmental Inspection Section director Lee Mei-jung (李美蓉) said.
Violators have seven days to file an appeal after receiving an opinion form, Lee said.
Bureau officials said Lin had replaced the styrofoam bowls with paper ones when they inspected her shop again yesterday.
In December last year, Greater Tainan became the first administrative region in the country to promulgate “low-carbon city autonomous regulations,” which prohibit the use of styrofoam utensils and containers at all business establishments except for temporary food stalls on the street and in night markets.
Bureau boss Chang Huang-chen (張皇珍) said that following a three-month grace period, officials on April 1 began inspecting 5,870 businesses in the city, and 374 were issued a warning ticket.
“For the betterment of our health and living environment, the bureau urges all business establishments to cooperate [with the new regulations]. Meanwhile, residents are urged to notify the bureau if they discover any transgressors,” Chang 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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