Environmental group the Penghu Ocean Citizen Alliance yesterday raised awareness of large amounts of garbage washed ashore by Typhoon Chan-Hom and urged the public to avoid using plastic products and not disposing of trash on beaches.
Alliance director Weng Chen-sheng (翁珍聖) said that, after the typhoon, he found a variety of garbage along the shore of Siyu Island (西嶼) — the second-largest island of Penghu County — including fishing equipment, plastic utensils, bottles, diapers, cosmetics containers and toys.
“The majority of the garbage that washed ashore during the typhoon is plastic,” he said.
Referring to a video by New Scientist magazine on Monday last week, which shows zooplankton consuming tiny beads of plastic, he said that marine litter could greatly compromise food safety.
Although zooplankton are at the bottom of the food chain, the plastics they consume accumulate in fish that feed on zooplankton and those fish are then eaten by humans.
“Over time, this could pose a greater threat to food safety than adulterated food oil. In the near future, even ocean fish could become a food safety issue,” he said.
He urged the public not to dispose of garbage in the ocean or on beaches and to avoid using plastic products whenever possible.
The problem could be somewhat mitigated by people using reusable utensils when they picnic or barbecue, as plastic utensils are a major source of waste.
He said that the association would launch a beach cleaning campaign that extends to the intertidal zones off Siyu Island.
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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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