In the opening months of this year, as coronavirus wreaked havoc on the global economy, environmentalists noticed an unexpected benefit of the pandemic. Amid national lockdowns and a sharp fall in demand for international travel, air pollution levels went into an unprecedented decline.
However, a World Economic Forum report published last month indicated that coronavirus’s effect on the environment has not been entirely positive. The report warned that an increase in demand for single-use plastics required for medical supplies, alongside reduced monitoring of waste disposal, “will have long-term impacts on the environment.”
Despite success in controlling the spread of coronavirus, Taiwan is not exempt from these emerging environmental challenges. It is against this background that volunteers will take to Taiwan’s beaches and forests tomorrow for the Taiwan National Clean Up Day.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan National Clean Up
This will be the fourth year of the nationwide event, which has now expanded to 22 locations including Penghu (澎湖) and Miaoli (苗栗) counties and Taitung County’s Dulan Village (都蘭). An expected 1,000 volunteers will take part collecting close to 10 tons of garbage.
Ryan Hevern, the American co-founder of the event, underscored the importance of this year’s clean-up and urged against equating the dip in tourism due to coronavirus, with a fall in the volume of garbage they expect to collect.
While admitting the organization anticipated finding less sky lanterns littering the forests near tourist hot-spots Shifen (十分) and Pingxi (平溪), Hevern emphasized that coronavirus would have “no effect whatsoever” on the amount of garbage they would find on Taiwan’s beaches.
A crucial reason behind this is the garbage’s wide range of sources, of which the local fishing industry is a major contributor. Beyond the expected plastic containers, previous volunteers combing the beaches have found rope, netting and even refrigerators.
Another key dimension is that a significant proportion of the garbage is international in origin. Plastic bottles brought by ocean currents to Taiwan’s beaches often come from places as far away as China, Vietnam and Indonesia.
For Philip Chang (張上緒), a volunteer who has joined every year, it is finding garbage like this that re-affirms the importance of the event. This year, he will help clean up Jinshan Beach (金山).
Chang says that when you begin finding garbage from other countries, you “realize the global nature of this problem.” In turn, this has an impact on the Taiwanese participants themselves, in cultivating a sense of “global citizenship.”
As the world transitions out of the coronavirus crisis, projects like National Clean Up Day will only increase in importance. They will be vital in drawing attention to and redressing the increased volume of plastic waste caused by the pandemic.
For Chang, raising awareness within communities is the crucial first step. Because once the problem is recognized, he continues, “you feel a sense of accountability toward solving it.”
For more details, go to Facebook page: Taiwan National Clean Up Day.
May 6 to May 12 Those who follow the Chinese-language news may have noticed the usage of the term zhuge (豬哥, literally ‘pig brother,’ a male pig raised for breeding purposes) in reports concerning the ongoing #Metoo scandal in the entertainment industry. The term’s modern connotations can range from womanizer or lecher to sexual predator, but it once referred to an important rural trade. Until the 1970s, it was a common sight to see a breeder herding a single “zhuge” down a rustic path with a bamboo whip, often traveling large distances over rugged terrain to service local families. Not only
Ahead of incoming president William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20 there appear to be signs that he is signaling to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and that the Chinese side is also signaling to the Taiwan side. This raises a lot of questions, including what is the CCP up to, who are they signaling to, what are they signaling, how with the various actors in Taiwan respond and where this could ultimately go. In the last column, published on May 2, we examined the curious case of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) heavyweight Tseng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) — currently vice premier
The last time Mrs Hsieh came to Cihu Park in Taoyuan was almost 50 years ago, on a school trip to the grave of Taiwan’s recently deceased dictator. Busloads of children were brought in to pay their respects to Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正), known as Generalissimo, who had died at 87, after decades ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law. “There were a lot of buses, and there was a long queue,” Hsieh recalled. “It was a school rule. We had to bow, and then we went home.” Chiang’s body is still there, under guard in a mausoleum at the end of a path
Last week the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) released a set of very strange numbers on Taiwan’s wealth distribution. Duly quoted in the Taipei Times, the report said that “The Gini coefficient for Taiwanese households… was 0.606 at the end of 2021, lower than Australia’s 0.611, the UK’s 0.620, Japan’s 0.678, France’s 0.676 and Germany’s 0.727, the agency said in a report.” The Gini coefficient is a measure of relative inequality, usually of wealth or income, though it can be used to evaluate other forms of inequality. However, for most nations it is a number from .25 to .50