Coastal cleanup activities will be held nationwide on Sept. 18 in support of a global ocean conservation campaign, the nation’s major environmental groups said.
Advocacy groups, including the Taiwan Environmental Information Association, the Society of Wilderness (SOW) and the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation, said environmentally conscious people are welcome to take part in the coastal cleanup program.
Quantitative data about the trash picked up from coastal regions around Taiwan that day would be sent to the headquarters of the International Coastal Cleanup in Texas, an SOW spokesman said.
The campaign has evolved from a single cleanup on a Texas beach 25 years ago into a worldwide movement dedicated to ending the threat posed by trash in oceans around the globe, the spokesman said.
Every year in September, volunteers in more than 100 countries remove millions of kilograms of trash from beaches and waterways all over the world as part of the global volunteer effort for ocean conservation, he added.
The spokesman said that the biggest difference between the campaign’s activities and other similar programs is that the campaign provides a form to record what was found in the cleanup.
“The trash and debris collected from the world’s beaches and waterways will be documented for analysis to identify their sources,” the spokesman said.
He said the campaign is aimed at reminding the public of the gravity of ocean pollution and helping to change the behavior that allows trash and debris to reach the ocean in the first place.
Taiwan joined the cleanup campaign last year for the first time, with 370 volunteers taking part in a 2.12km coastal cleanup effort that removed 172kg of trash from beaches and coastal waters, the spokesman said.
This year, the spokesman said, all of the SOW branches in various parts of Taiwan will launch a coastal cleanup campaign on Sept. 18, along with environmental groups in many other countries, including Australia.
“Prospective volunteers are welcome to search the SOW map to find a coastal site near them and sign up online [at www. sow.org.tw] for the activity,” the spokesman said.
The Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation added it will document all the trash collected in Taiwan during the period and forward the data to the Texas headquarters.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
RSS