The public is encouraged to recycle used batteries, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday, ahead of the Lantern Festival next week, which is expected to generate nearly 4 tonnes of batteries used to power handheld lanterns.
The agency estimated that a total of 1.26 million button-cell-powered lanterns would be given out by local governments this year to celebrate the festival, which would produce 3.79 tonnes of waste batteries as each lantern uses three 1g button cells.
Batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium, and throwing away used batteries could cause environmental and health hazards, the EPA said.
“Toxic metals can leak from improperly disposed batteries and enter the food chain and human body, causing neurological symptoms, reproductive impairment, and liver and kidney diseases. The EPA urges the public to do garbage sorting and make sure that batteries are properly recycled,” EPA Resource Recycling Fund Management Committee staffer Chao Kuo-feng (趙國芬) said.
The nation uses about 9,300 tonnes of batteries every year and had a recycle rate of about 47 percent last year, which meets the EU’s 45 percent waste battery recycling goal, Chao said.
Taiwan has an 80 percent reuse rate of waste batteries, from which manganese powder, iron and zinc are retrieved, she said.
“Batteries have rather low recycling rates because they are small and often discarded as trash, or they have special design specifications, such as machine batteries and laptop batteries, some of which are not easy to remove, so they are usually disposed of along with the appliances they power,” she said, adding that the agency had instructed local governments to design easily detachable battery holders for giveaway lanterns.
The agency also encouraged people to remove used batteries from larger appliances for use in low-power consumption appliances, such as alarm clocks, remote controls and calculators, to drain residual power before recycling them.
Used batteries can be dropped off at convenience stores, cosmetic shops and electronics outlets. Some convenience stores provide incentives for battery recycling, such as an NT$8 shopping discount at 7-Eleven, or a tea egg or a yogurt drink at FamilyMart in exchange for a bag of batteries weighing 500g, she 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:
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