Starting next month, Taipei residents may well have one more incentive to cut down on their levels of garbage production -- after the city government's Bureau of Environmental Protection yesterday announced a set of regulations for garbage collection fees yesterday, to go into effect in April.
Under the new regulations, garbage collectors will only accept regulation-sized garbage bags, and will charge residents by volume.
The new rules allow collectors to reject bags stuffed beyond the volume limit, as well as those containing a mixture of recyclable and non-recyclable garbage. The collectors may demand residents separate or repackage such garbage.
The new rules also set an NT$1,200 to NT$4,500 fine for those who discard the garbage outside specified garbage collection points.
Under the new regulations, residents in areas around garbage incinerators and landfills will receive subsidies from the fees. More than 16,000 households from five boroughs around the incinerators and landfills will receive NT$1,476 in subsidy coupons per head.
Taipei City produces more than 3,000 tons of garbage per day and garbage disposal costs run as high as NT$200 million per year, according to bureau officials.
The bureau is also working to formulate complementary measures for the new garbage collection system, including the distribution of standardized garbage bags and the possibility of selling advertisement space on the bags.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
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