The Executive Yuan is planning to launch a marine cleanup program targeting coastal garbage, discarded fishing gear and driftwood on the nation’s 1,988km of coastline to encourage people to get closer to the ocean, high-ranking government officials said yesterday.
Minister Without Portfolio Wu Tse-cheng (吳澤成) had convened several meetings about marine garbage disposal with eight government agencies before they reached a consensus on Friday, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
A report would be presented next week to Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), who is expected to approve it, showing the Executive Yuan’s determination to “respect the ocean” after it last week eased regulations on public access to mountains and forests, they said.
Photo courtesy of Bitou Elementary School president Chen Yu-fang
All of the nation’s beaches would be supervised by government agencies, which would be responsible for keeping them clean, the sources added.
Up to 646 tonnes of garbage has been collected from Taiwan’s beaches, meaning that the trash collected over every 100m could fill 13 trash bags, or a large refrigerator, Greenpeace Taiwan said in July.
Almost 20 percent of the nation’s marine garbage is amassed along the northern coast under the influence of sea currents and winds, the officials said.
Central government agencies would work with local governments to clean up shores nationwide, especially daily garbage, discarded fishing nets and pieces of wood washed down from mountains, they said.
The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is to head the cleanup program, they added.
The Council of Agriculture’s Fisheries Agency would be responsible for cleaning fishing ports, Taiwan International Ports Corp for commercial ports, the Ministry of National Defense for military ports and the Ministry of Finance’s National Property Administration would be responsible for unregistered land tracts, they said.
The Tourism Bureau would be in charge of cleaning up trash in national scenic areas, the Ministry of the Interior would be responsible for national parks, the Ocean Affairs Council would be responsible for trash at sea, and the Forestry Bureau would tackle driftwood, the sources said.
As more civic groups have volunteered to clean up beaches in the past few years, some lawmakers who had taken part in such events have advised the Executive Yuan to lend more support to the efforts.
The cleanups help tidy up the beaches, but a fundamental solution would be implementing a long-term policy for garbage management, the officials said.
The Executive Yuan would require the EPA to improve its disposal of land-sourced garbage that ends up in the ocean and ask the Ministry of Education to improve bottom-up education to encourage students to produce less garbage in their daily lives, they added.
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