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.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS