The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) yesterday released statistics on reductions to last year’s electricity and water consumption as a result of Taiwanese purchasing products with EPA-certified “green marks,” which showed that the public can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 223,000 tonnes per month if all 8.4 million households use such products.
The estimate was roughly equal to 603 times the carbon dioxide absorbed by trees in Taipei’s Daan Forest Park every year, the EPA said.
In addition, if every household were to change to green mark products, they would save the nation as much as 312 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per month, enough to cover the demand of the about 1 million households in Taipei for a month.
Photo: Chang Chung-i, Taipei Times
They would also save a total of 44.1 million tonnes of water, the equivalent of the combined capacity of 17,669 standard swimming pools, the agency said.
The products reviewed by the EPA to determine whether they meet the requirements to receive a green mark include information technology products, such as computers and monitors, as well as a range of household items, including water dispensers, fluorescent lights, electric fans and air conditioners, the EPA said.
Paper products made of recycled materials are also eligible for the vetting process, it added.
Department of Supervision, Evaluation and Dispute Resolution Director-General Hsiao Hui-chuan (蕭慧娟) said that if a household were to replace two old, energy-inefficient air conditioners with green mark units, it would be able to reduce its electricity bill by 10 percent per year.
She said that green mark products are energy efficient and therefore generate less carbon dioxide.
For example, an EPA-approved computer monitor can save at least 1kWh of electricity and produces 0.69kg less carbon dioxide per month, while a desktop computer certified by the agency can reduce electricity consumption by 3.28kWh and carbon dioxide generation by 2.26kg compared with less environmentally friendly models, Hsiao said.
The difference in energy efficiency is most obvious in refrigerators, with green mark refrigerators reducing consumption of electricity by at least 10kWh per month and carbon dioxide generation by 6.9kg, followed by dehumidifiers, which can cut at least 9.72kWh and 6.72kg of carbon dioxide monthly.
The EPA said eco-friendly products have so far helped reduce the nation’s energy consumption by 144.9 million kilowatt-hours and carbon dioxide emissions by 104,000 tonnes. The agency based its calculations on the number of green mark products sold over the past year multiplied by the expected service life of the products.
Consumers can identify EPA-certified products by the green mark logo of the Earth wrapped in a green leaf.
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