With the FIFA World Cup in Brazil capturing media attention around the globe, French newspaper Le Figaro ran a column by Anthony Bleux on Thursday saying “Taiwan has [already] won its world cup.”
The cause for the claim? Taiwan’s pioneering venture into breaking down polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and successfully recycling plastic into textiles put the words “Made in Taiwan” on the clothing of 10 national teams participating in the World Cup, the report said.
The material is more comfortable and sweat-absorbent than cotton, and it is made from an abundant resource in Taiwan, which consumes 4.5 billion plastic bottles a year, the report said.
The report added that using such materials to make clothing reduces energy usage by 30 percent.
The coloring of the material depends on the color of the bottles recycled in the process, the report said.
According to the report, when most of the world moved its factories to China in search of lower costs, Taiwanese textile manufacturers — such as Ecomax Textile, Eclat Textile, Singtex Industrial and Super Textile Corp — had to become innovative to boost their competitive edge, spurring the textile industry to launch decade-long research into breaking down PET in 1996.
Despite claims that PET bottles were not dissoluble and would not decompose for up to 400 years, the industry is now capable of making one complete soccer uniform out of materials recycled from 18 plastic bottles, the report said.
Thirteen million bottles, which could fill 29 soccer fields, were used to supply the material for clothing 10 national teams competing in the World Cup, the report said.
Nike first partnered with Taiwan on using the material four years ago in the South African FIFA World Cup and made more than NT$2 billion (US$67 million) in profit, the report said.
According to FIFA estimates, the Taiwanese textile industry is the primary beneficiary of a US$40 billion market for PET recycled clothing, enjoying a 70 market share, the report said.
The recycled PET material can be used not only in textiles, but also in other industries, the report said.
At the 2011 International Flora Expo hosted in Taipei, Taiwanese designer Arthur Huang (黃謙智) built a 24m tall building, the Eco Ark, using only hexagonal plastic blocks made from 1.5 million plastic bottles.
The design was said to be resistant to typhoons and earthquakes, both of which are natural regular occurrences in the region, the report said.
The report concluded that Taiwan had shown itself to be an exceptional player and at the head of the “green innovative technology” game.
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