An environmental-award-winning rural township in Tainan County is working with agriculture experts to recycle leftovers, officials said yesterday.
Hsinhua, which is home to about 45,000 people, was chosen by the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) last year as the best performer in a nationwide contest promoting a neat environment.
Over the past three years, the township office has aggressively promoted community-based environmental protection tasks, such as cleaning roads, regular disinfection of the community and removing ugly advertising banners and shop signs. Township officials have punished polluters by repeatedly ticketing them.
According to Lee Mun-she (李穆生), director-general of the county's Environmental Protection Bureau, Hsinhua has outperformed the other 30 townships in the county for years.
Township head Hsu Mao-chiao (
"On weekends, more than 40,000 tourists visit Hsinhua," Hsu told at a press conference yesterday.
Officials have preserved old trees along Route 168, one of the township's main roads, and named one section of the route the "Green Tunnel."
Su Ming-hung (蘇明宏), head of Hsinhua's public sanitation team, said residents are encouraged to recycle usable materials.
The recycling rate in Hsinhua reached 30 percent last year, up from 25 percent in 2002. The average national recycling rate is less than 15 percent.
To boost its recycling rate, Lee said the township wants to build a treatment plan that would recycle household leftovers into fertilizer. About 30 percent to 40 percent of the township's household waste is leftovers.
The plan was given technical support by experts from the Council of Agriculture's Livestock Research Institute, which is located in Hsinhua. In the 600-resident community where staff from the institute and their families live, a small machine turns 100kg of leftovers a day into fertilizer.
According to Sheen Shao-yi (
"We will use similar technologies to help the township office to build a larger machine, which can treat up to 15 tonnes of leftovers daily," Sheen said.
Hsu said that the township office had received NT$9 million from the county government to build the treatment plant but it needs NT$2 million more.
"We hope both the EPA and the Council of Agriculture can help us," Hsu said.
Council officials said yesterday they had been supportive of recycling agricultural waste.
At the eco-community in Hsinhua, institute director Wang Cheng-taung (王政騰) displayed environmentally friendly flowerpots, manufactured from compressed, dried sludge collected from animal-waste treatment facilities. Wang said that organic materials should not be regarded simply as waste.
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