To promote the flushing of toilet paper, Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday demonstrated how to do so in the public toilets of Taipei’s Ximen MRT Station.
Flushing paper could improve the world’s perception of the nation, Lee said.
The EPA in March announced that used toilet paper should be flushed instead of being disposed of in waste bins.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
However, after several months of spreading the message, some still doubt the policy’s feasibility.
There are 902 public toilets in Taipei, but only 375 of them are in compliance with the policy, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chin Huei-chu (秦慧珠) said earlier this month.
As many agencies could not comply with the directive owing to old pipes, authorities should reconsider its practicality, she added.
Lee yesterday said that most public toilets can flush away toilet paper, and those that cannot would be improved soon.
“Thousands of foreign visitors will come to Taiwan [in August] for the Universiade in Taipei. If they find people in Taipei still discarding toilet paper in waste bins, they would think the nation is not civilized,” he said.
People should change their ideas and keep up with international trends, he said, adding that “toilet paper has no problems. It is users who have problems.”
Public facilities are required to post signs promoting the policy by the end of this month, EPA Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substance Management Director Yuan Shao-ying (袁紹英) said, adding that the EPA will begin inspecting the facilities from next month.
Those still unable to comply with the policy should put up signs explicitly telling users not to flush away tissue paper, Yuan added.
Public facilities without proper signs would not be fined, but those with dirty surroundings would be subject to a fine of between NT$1,200 and NT$6,000 in accordance with the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法), he said.
Toilet paper that is not disposable, like facial tissue paper, may not be sold within a 10m-radius of public lavatories, he added.
The EPA said it would spend NT$10 million (US$328,947) in the second half of this year to inspect public toilets nationwide, starting with facilities at transportation hubs.
The EPA is also budgeting about NT$4 billion for a seven-year plan to improve the nation’s 40,000 public toilets, he said, adding that school toilets are not to be included.
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT: A US Air Force KC-135 tanker came less than 1,000 feet of an EVA plane and was warned off by a Taipei air traffic controller, a report said A US aerial refueling aircraft came very close to an EVA Airways jet in the airspace over southern Taiwan, a military aviation news Web site said. A report published by Alert 5 on Tuesday said that automatic dependent surveillance–broadcast (ADS-B) data captured by planfinder.net on Wednesday last week showed a US Air Force KC-135 tanker “coming less than 1,000 feet [305m] vertically with EVA Air flight BR225 as both aircraft crossed path south of Taiwan” that morning. The report included an audio recording of a female controller from the Taipei air traffic control center telling the unidentified aircraft that it was
A series of discussions on the legacy of martial law and authoritarianism are to be held at the Taipei International Book Exhibition this month, featuring findings and analysis by the Transitional Justice Commission. The commission and publisher Book Republic organized the series, entitled “Escaping the Nation’s Labyrinth of Memory: What Authoritarian Symbols and Records Can Tell Us,” to help people navigate narratives through textual analysis and comparisons with other nations. The four-day series is to begin on Thursday next week with a discussion between commission Chairwoman Yang Tsui (楊翠), Polish-language translator Lin Wei-yun (林蔚昀), and Polish author and artist Pawel Gorecki comparing
MOVING OUT: A former professor said that rent and early education costs in Taipei are the nation’s highest, which makes it difficult for young people to start families The population of Taipei last year fell to the lowest in 23 years due to high rent, more transportation options and the expansion of northern cities into a single metropolis, academics and city officials said on Monday. Data released this month by the Ministry of the Interior showed that the capital was home to 2,602,418 people last year, down 42,623 from 2019. The decline is second only to 1993, when the population fell by 42,828 people, while Taipei’s population was the lowest it has been since 1997. Taipei saw the biggest drop among the six special municipalities, while Taoyuan led the group in
A legislator yesterday called for authorities to investigate the sale of Chinese-made, Internet-connected karaoke machines containing “propaganda songs.” Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) said she was approached by a person who had discovered Chinese patriotic songs such as My Motherland (我的祖國) — which is commonly referred to as China’s “second national anthem” — in Chinese-made karaoke devices sold in Taiwan. The machines are popular, as they can connect to the Internet, providing access to thousands of songs, she said. One retailer, who asked to remain anonymous, said that the machines first entered the local market about three years ago, starting with
RSS