Taiwanese produce on average three kinds of plastic garbage every day, but most are not properly recycled, a survey released yesterday by the Taiwan RE-THINK Environmental Education Association found.
The survey of 1,085 students and online respondents last month showed that up to 96 percent of people dump certain single-use plastics every day, and every person surveyed produced at least three kinds of plastic garbage.
Plastic bags are the most common trash that people produce, followed by plastic-coated food containers, plastic cups, plastic straws and bottles made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), RE-THINK marketing and public relations director Sandra Wang (王滋鮮) told a news conference in Taipei.
People might think that recycling PET bottles is easy, but only 52 percent of respondents knew that it takes nearly 450 years for the environment to decompose the bottles, she said.
Recycling is not a cure-all for garbage disposal, and people should improve their understanding of garbage and its destinations, RE-THINK co-founder Jason Huang (黃之揚) said.
In its recycling index, to be launched next year, the association would list out the components and recycling category of certain products, he said.
The index would be launched online, as well as made into teaching materials for schools, he added.
Last year, RE-THINK created a printed and online guidebook of marine debris, which it used as the basis of an interactive game to raise awareness about plastic pollution.
More than 40,000 people joined beach cleanups and collected hundreds of tonnes of garbage in 2017 and last year, Wang said.
However, the trash produced by each Taiwanese per day amounted to 1.132kg last year, a record high since 2001, she said, citing data from the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA).
The government has continued to enact plastic reduction policies, including the ban on single-use plastic straws for dine-in customers at public and chain restaurants, which took effect in July, and which garners increasing support from the public, EPA Department of Environmental Sanitation and Toxic Substance Management Director-General Tsai Ling-yi (蔡玲儀) said at the news conference.
Starting from January, the Taipei City Government is to implement a ban on providing single-use plastic cutlery at shopping malls, which would be followed by more local municipalities, she added.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai