As of Monday next week, disposable tableware and bottled water can no longer be sold at 112 public facilities and 235 schools in Taipei, including Taipei Zoo, Taipei Water Park and the Taipei Confucius Temple.
An internal Taipei City Government policy banning the use of disposable utensils, including plastic spoons, wooden chopsticks and paper cups, in Taipei City Hall took effect on April 1 and the city later announced that all public elementary schools and junior-high schools would have to also implement the policy next month.
Containers and utensils made with melamine have also been banned, as have sales of individual bottles of water.
The ban does not apply to the city’s public high schools.
Cable news channel TVBS quoted Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) as saying that the new policy would include 112 second-level government agencies and tourist attractions.
In other news, the city government yesterday discounted a Chinese-language Business Weekly magazine story that cited Ko as saying that he did not know how much longer he would be mayor.
According to the magazine, Ko said that a fortune teller had told him that his lowest approval rating in opinion surveys — 18 percent — would occur in June next year and that “it would be as bad as [former president] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).”
The city government said the story was a joke.
“Ko learned about the fortune teller’s prophecy from a friend, and he uses it as a reminder to be strict with himself and put more effort into improving the city, so the story has nothing to do with a fortune teller, surnamed Su (蘇), who appeared on television on Saturday last week,” city government spokesman Sidney Lin (林鶴明) said.
“Ko is a physician and considers fortune telling merely as something funny to talk about,” Lin said, adding that Ko would always “respect the gods and spirits, but keep a distance from them.”
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