The concept of returning to nature after death is becoming widespread in Taiwan, with eco-friendly burials increasing nationwide.
In Taiwan eco-friendly burials usually take the form of having bodies cremated and the ashes being buried near trees or flowers or scattered in the sea. No graves or stele are built for the dead.
The concept of eco-burials has found wider acceptance in the nation’s six special municipalities, with 2,857 taking place in Taipei in 2016, followed by 1,122 in New Taipei City, 343 in Taoyuan, 846 in Taichung, 290 in Tainan and 698 in Kaohsiung, Ministry of the Interior data showed.
Photo: Huang Yao-cheng, Taipei Times
In comparison, the numbers of such burials in other cities and counties were fewer than 100, the data showed.
Nevertheless, the overall total of more than 30,000 in 2016 represented a sharp increase from just 200 in 2006.
Eco-friendly burials address the problem of a shortage of space in Taiwan in ways that traditional casket burials or columbariums cannot, Department of Civil Affairs deputy director Cheng Ying-hung (鄭英弘) said.
Cheng attributed the higher number of cases in the six special municipalities to better quality infrastructure to support eco-friendly burials.
The idea behind eco-friendly burials is to make cemeteries more like parks, so that people can visit them to remember their loved ones whenever they want, as opposed to the convention of going to the gravesites just once each year to pay respects and tidy tombs, Cheng said.
There are 31 cemeteries in Taiwan that allow for a tree or flower burial or the spreading of ashes, two zones that are not cemeteries where such burials can take place, and nine local governments that can help with sea burials, ministry data showed.
The trend has grown so popular that some places, such as Kaohsiung, are on the verge of running out of space designated for “tree burials.”
Kaohsiung has seen eco-friendly burials grow by up to 60 percent annually, Hsieh Ting-sung (謝汀嵩), head of the city’s Mortuary Services Office, said on Wednesday.
Because of the rapid growth, the city’s two cemeteries in Qishan (旗山) and Yanchao (燕巢) districts that have natural burial sections are running out of space for tree burials, Hsieh said.
The total 1,400 burrows dug next to trees at the cemeteries for the burial of ashes will soon be unable to be renewed in time for cyclic utilization, Hsieh said.
While the burrows are divided among several tree zones, a zone can only be reused through a soil-turning process one year after all its burrows are occupied, he added.
Pressed by the rising demand, the city is planning to expand the tree burial section at the Qishan cemetery and to establish a new section in Shanlin District (杉林), Hsieh said.
The tree burial section in Qishan was inaugurated in 2010 with 800 burrows, while the one in Yanchao opened in 2015 with 600 burrows.
As of 2015, Qishan had received 349 applications for tree burials while Yanchao had 214, according to official statistics.
However, over the past two years, the number of dead buried next to the trees has grown to nearly 1,000 each year in Kaohsiung, which records about 21,000 deaths every year, statistics show.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,