Taichung City's experience in recycling leftover food shows that the nation has great potential to carry out a new policy mandating food recycling in 2006, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
Environmental Protection Administrator Chang Juu-en (
To show his appreciation to the city's garbage collectors, EPA head Chang yesterday presented Mid-Autumn Festival gifts to them.
"We hope to see more residents cooperate to recycle leftover food in the near future," Chang said.
According to city environmental officials, 1 million residents produce about 230 tonnes of leftover food daily.
Last year, the city government began turning leftover food into feed for chickens. Currently, the set of facilities run by the city government turns about 2 tonnes of leftover food into 300kg of feed daily.
"By mixing the feed with other feed ingredients, more than 2,000 chickens are raised and closely monitored by experts from National Chung Hsing University and Tunghai University," inspection spokesman Lin Tzo-hsiang (
Lin said that chickens raised in this way are healthy and will be available in local markets next year.
The EPA plans to launch a one-year trial of compulsory leftover food recycling measures in 25 jurisdictions in January.
The policy is part of an effort to ease the burden on waste incinerators. EPA officials said that Taiwan produces about 4,500 tonnes of leftover food waste daily, which accounts for 25 percent of all household waste.
According to Chang, 254 townships in 25 jurisdictions are working on food waste recycling. Currently, 900 tonnes of leftover food is recycled daily.
After the recycling of table scraps and other food waste becomes compulsory in January 2006 nationwide, the amount of leftover food recycled daily might increase to at least 1,600 tonnes the following year, the EPA said.
"We estimate that the recycling project will create about NT$2.4 billion in economic benefits annually," Chang said.
In addition to the production of chicken feed, the city government also uses recycled food waste to feed pigs and produce compost.
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