The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) has budgeted NT$15.3 billion (US$499.8 million) for a six-year plan to update garbage treatment facilities, EPA Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) said on Thursday.
Starting this year, the plan aims to update trash incinerators, promote regional collaboration on garbage treatment, facilitate transitioning outlying islands’ trash, improve treatment facilities and promote a circular economy, Lee said.
He cited Premier Lin Chuan (林全) as saying that the administration should speed up the industrialization of garbage treatment.
There are 24 trash incinerators nationwide, but the two in Yunlin and Taitung counties are not operational due to environmental concerns.
Their closure requires the two counties to ask other municipalities to help burn their trash.
The Kaohsiung City Government should not have required Yunlin County to take back 1.8 tonnes of furnace slag for each tonne of trash burned, the county’s Douliou City Mayor Hsieh Shu-ya (謝淑亞) said last week.
Asked how the central government intends to solve the nation’s slag problem, Lee said the EPA plans to adjust the exchange ratio to 200kg of slag per tonne of trash burned.
However, local governments would have to pay extra treatment fees, Lee added.
Yunlin County Commissioner Lee Chin-yung (李進勇) yesterday said that the new ratio is fair and the county government is willing to support it.
Of the nation’s 24 incinerators, the administration is to first renovate the 11 facilities that have been operational for 20 years, Bureau of Environmental Inspection Director-General Wu Sheng-chung (吳盛忠) said.
The incinerators once updated would be able to process an additional 260,000 tonnes of trash per year, he said, adding that their life spans would be extended for another 15 to 20 years.
Facilities that can utilize the new mechanical biological treatment technique can process trash more efficiently and greatly reduce its volume, he added.
As for food waste, the EPA is to introduce dehydration facilities that can diminish the waste’s volume and shorten its storage time from 210 days to 90 days, Wu said.
Additional reporting by Lin Kuo-hsien
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