The Ministry of Environment is considering charging manufacturers or importers of mattresses recycling fees, as discarded beds have been clogging up the nation’s waste disposal facilities.
Last year, people threw away 1,800 tonnes of spring mattresses, including 580,000 units from the six special municipalities, ministry officials said.
Pocket spring mattresses accounted for about half of the bulk, they said, adding that they are difficult to disassemble because of their complex design..
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection
The recycling logjams are threatening to overburden the nation’s landfills, they said.
Piles of unprocessed mattresses are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes and pose a threat to public health and sanitation, they added.
The ministry is talking to the six special municipalities about imposing a disposal fee on mattress manufacturers and importers to fund subsidies for recycling contractors, Resource Circulation Administration deputy director-general Lin Chien-san (林健三) said.
City governments and contractors involved in the discussions have yet to reach a consensus about the proposed measure, but local environmental authorities have expressed their willingness to cooperate, he said.
The ministry also recommends using the stuffing in pocket spring mattresses as incinerator fuel, Lin said.
Asked about the proposal, the Kaohsiung Environmental Bureau said that the city collects about 100,000 discarded spring mattresses per year, but its small crew of sanitation workers can take apart only 10 ordinary mattresses or 3.5 pocket spring mattresses a day.
Starting in January next year, the bureau will begin charging the public up to NT$700 to dispose of used mattresses, it said, adding that people who bring the beds to the landfill themselves could save up to NT$200.
A Taichung City Government spokesperson said the backlog of discarded pocket spring mattresses nearly overran the city’s landfills until it started in June to use automated shredders that can take apart 500 beds a day.
The Tainan City Government said it collects about 4,000 used spring mattresses, and uses temporary storage and contractor-operated shredders that can take apart 300 beds a day.
Tainan Environmental Protection Bureau Acting Director-General Hsu Jen-tse (許仁澤) said his bureau is considering imposing the same disposal fees as Kaohsiung to prevent residents from the other city from dumping their mattresses in Tainan.
A fugitive in a suspected cosmetic surgery fraud case today returned to Taiwan from Canada, after being wanted for six years. Internet celebrity Su Chen-tuan (蘇陳端), known as Lady Nai Nai (貴婦奈奈), and her former boyfriend, plastic surgeon Paul Huang (黃博健), allegedly defrauded clients and friends of about NT$1 billion (US$30.66 million). Su was put on a wanted list in 2019 when she lived in Toronto, Canada, after failing to respond to subpoenas and arrest warrants from the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office. Su arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 5am today on an EVA Air flight accompanied by a
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
Restarting the No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant would take up to 18 months, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said today. Kuo was answering questions during a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Economics Committee, where legislators are considering amendments to the Renewable Energy Development Act (再生能源發展條) amid concerns about the consequences of the Pingtung County reactor’s decommissioning scheduled for May 17. Its decommissioning is to mark the end of Taiwan’s nuclear power production. However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have proposed an amendment to the Nuclear Reactor Facilities Regulation Act (核子反應器設施管制法) that would extend the life of existing
RSS