Taipei City councilors yesterday accused the Bureau of Environ-mental Protection of mixing recyclables and regular garbage for incineration in contravention of collection policy -- a charge the bureau denies.
The allegations, which city councilors said were supported by a videotape filmed on Oct. 28, call into question the city's garbage collection policies. Residents are required to separate recyclables from regular garbage for pickup.
"[The videotape] shows that the city government has been treating city residents as fools," said the New Party's James Wei
The videotape, which was reviewed at a press conference yesterday, shows garbage men tossing bags of what appears to be recyclables into a truck bound for the Peitou incinerator.
"Regardless of whether it's the bureau director's fault, or Mayor Ma Ying-jeou's
The city councilor said he believed the bags displayed in the video contained recyclables such as styrofoam, as regular garbage is required to be disposed of in standard bags.
Chen Li-hui
"The question here is: why on earth do recyclables end up in the incinerator like regular garbage?" Chen said. "Doesn't burning styrofoam and other plastic products that contain chlorine produce the toxic compound dioxin?"
Furthermore, Chen said, the burning of styrofoam calls into question planned capital investments in the city's Neihu and Mucha incinerators.
The environmental protection bureau plans to spend NT$1.2 billion reducing dioxin emission levels at the two plants.
The NT$580 million Neihu incinerator project is expected to be completed by April.
The NT$688.5 million Mucha plant is slated to resume operations by July.
While the two incinerators undergo improvements, the Peitou plant is the only one running at full capacity.
But the Bureau of Environmental Protection didn't take the allegations lightly yesterday
Bureau director Stephen Shen
"First of all, I'd like to make it clear that I believe the garbage men have been doing a good job in taking care of recyclables, because there are financial incentives for them to do so," Shen said.
The collectors take home 60 percent of the funds earned from the sale of recyclables to recycling contractors, he said.
Second, Shen said, there was a good reason why garbage trucks have been used to collect recyclables, as the videotape showed.
"Because we stopped collecting garbage on Sundays, more garbage trucks are available to collect recyclables," he said.
Furthermore, Shen said, so-called "dirty" styrofoam is separated from "clean" styrofoam, with the former going to the incinerator and the latter shipped to two recycling centers at landfills in Futekeng and in Shanchuku, both in Nankang district.
The Futekeng landfill has roughly 11 tonnes of styrofoam waiting to be processed at present, while the Shanchuku landfill has roughly 20 tonnes, Shen said.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck off the southern coast of Mindanao in the Philippines at 7:38am today, prompting the US Tsunami Warning System to issue an alert for neighboring countries, including Taiwan. The system issued a purple alert indicating a "tsunami threat." The potential threat zone includes Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Yap and Palau. Philippine authorities were assessing the damage from the quake, with the office of civil defense seeking to verifying initial reports that 15 people had been killed and 129 injured in the region, mostly from falling debris. Arlene Hollero, disaster chief of Maasim town in the Philippines' Sarangani Province,
‘GRAY ZONE’ PRESSURE: Beijing’s activities are intended to create the deceitful impression that China has jurisdiction over the area around Taiwan, the CGA said Taiwan’s rights over its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone must not be violated by any country, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that it will not accept any unprovoked actions. The council issued the remarks in response to the China Coast Guard conducting maritime enforcement drills near eastern Taiwan and claiming to fully exercise China’s maritime administrative law enforcement authority. The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) has been closely monitoring the situation and is taking concrete steps to defend the nation’s sovereignty and secure its waters, the council said. China has no sovereign rights over the waters off eastern
RESILIENCE: Taiwan plays a key role in semiconductors, energy, information infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, AIT Director Raymond Greene said Taiwan’s continued investment in deterrence and resilience remains vital, especially in uncrewed systems and other emerging technologies, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday. Greene made the remarks at the annual National Strategic Summit on Supply Chain Resilience held by the Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET), a government-backed think tank. As Taiwan last year became the US’ fourth-largest trading partner and supply chain security is becoming more important, cooperation in emerging technologies continues to deepen between the two countries, he said. The US is committed to accelerating innovation, building key infrastructure, strengthening cooperation
RIGHT DIRECTION: Taiwan’s efforts to prevent forced labor include a proposal to ‘fully prohibit’ employers from withholding workers’ documents, an official said Taiwan is to establish a mechanism to restrict imports of goods linked to forced labor, the Executive Yuan said yesterday, after the US proposed imposing additional tariffs on Taiwanese goods over labor concerns. “The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Economic Affairs are to establish an interministerial review procedure,” Executive Yuan spokesperson Michelle Lee (李慧芝) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “The government is to use the Foreign Trade Act [貿易法] as the legal basis to restrict imports of goods produced with forced labor” and bring its supply chain governance more in line with international standards on human rights, resilience
RSS