Environmentalists yesterday called on the Ministry of Education to formulate policies to encourage the reuse of textbooks in an effort to raise awareness about the amount of paper used to print the material in the wake of the introduction of the nation’s compulsory 12-year education system.
To give people an idea of how much paper is required for a Taiwanese student to complete elementary and secondary-school, Taiwan Tree Protection Union members made two piles of textbooks into stacks nearly 3.5m high.
With more than 1.8 million elementary-school students, the text books issued annually in Taiwan would be as tall as 5,763 Taipei 101s if stacked, the members said, citing ministry statistics.
Photo: Yeh Kuan-yu, Taipei Times
The group said students who completed elementary and secondary education last year had between them used 288,286 tonnes of textbooks over the years — the equivalent of about 5,765,720 trees.
Since every tonne of textbooks requires 0.8 tonnes of paper pulp, the amount of paper used last year to make textbooks equaled 4,612 hectares of tropical rain forests, which are inhabited by many endangered animals, including orangutans, sloths and Malayan tapirs, as well as indigenous people and a variety of cancer-preventing herbs, they said.
The group called on schools to reuse textbooks.
Citing the examples of US and Japanese students, whose textbooks are used for five and 10 years on average respectively, union members said Taiwanese students should also make it a habit to pass on their books to younger children.
In Japan, each textbook is used by eight to 10 students on average, they said, adding that the habit of reusing text books also helps to instill a sense of conservation among young people.
Society of Wilderness president Lai Jung-hsiao (賴榮孝), also a member on the Executive Yuan’s National Council for Sustainable Development, said the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) should establish an oversight mechanism on imported paper pulp so that Taiwan only imports pulp produced by sustainable rain forests certified by international sustainable forest management organizations, such as the Forest Stewardship Council and World Wildlife Fund.
Citing a white paper released by the council this year, Lai said the EPA should join a list of countries, including New Zealand and Australia, to adopt council standards when awarding the Certification of Environmentally Preferable Products to companies.
He said the EPA should not issue the certification exclusively to tissue paper brands, but it should broaden the scope of the certification mechanism to include all paper products, including textbooks, to ensure that they are made of council-certified products.
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