Taipei City councilors yesterday called on the city government to promote Taipei as an international metropolis by taking measures to let residents flush toilet paper.
The councilors said that flushing toilet paper would improve the city's image internationally, as well as its sanitation.
Taipei should launch a "civilization campaign," the councilors said, adding that the sewage system could handle high quality toilet paper on the market.
"Toilets and toilet paper in Taipei are no different from those in cities around the world. It all depends on the city government's determination to take care of the sewage system and change residents' habits," Taiwan Solidarity Union Taipei City Councilor Chien Yu-yen (
Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Lee Ching-feng (李慶鋒) and president of the environmental group Homemakers' Union and Foundation Yen Mei-chuan (顏美娟) urged Taipei City Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) to focus his efforts on allowing people to flush toilet paper and thereby improve sanitation, instead of spending funds on providing toilet paper in MRT stations.
In response, Taipei City Sewage Systems Office Chief Secretary Hsu Nai-chin (
Chen Chung-min (陳忠民), family care business director at Kimberly-Clark Taiwan, the manufacturer of Sujay (舒潔) facial tissue, said toilet paper made by the major manufacturers dissolve easily.
Residents do not need to worry about blocking their toilets when flushing toilet paper, Chen said.
The city councilors illustrated their point by putting samples of toilet paper produced by Sujay, the University of Massachusetts, and Taipei city's municipal park, in water, to show how long it would take them to dissolve.
Su Feng-hui (
Lee said the city government should promote toilet-paper flushing in its own toilets first.
More than half of the bamboo vipers captured in Tainan in the past few years were found in the city’s Sinhua District (新化), while other districts had smaller catches or none at all. Every year, Tainan captures about 6,000 snakes which have made their way into people’s homes. Of the six major venomous snakes in Taiwan, the cobra, the many-banded krait, the brown-spotted pit viper and the bamboo viper are the most frequently captured. The high concentration of bamboo vipers captured in Sinhua District is puzzling. Tainan Agriculture Bureau Forestry and Nature Conservation Division head Chu Chien-ming (朱健明) earlier this week said that the
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