Environmental advocates yesterday urged the Ministry of Environment to enhance inspection mechanisms and penalties in amendments to waste disposal regulations to deter illegal disposal of surplus recycled products.
Draft amendments to the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) have already passed review by the legislature’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee and are to be sent to the legisature for review.
However, environmental advocates were worried that loopholes in the bill would open a back door for ill-purposed production of recycled products.
Changhua Environmental Protection Union researcher Lin Cheng-han (林政翰) said production of recycled products that lack a real market might be exploited to launder income from illegal disposal.
The amendments should stipulate the accountability of original waste-generating businesses for restoring environments where repurposed products made from their waste materials are illegally dumped, he said.
Wild at Heart Legal Defense Association researcher Hong Shuo-cheng (洪碩辰) said the circular economy is an end solution, while reducing waste from the source remains fundamental.
Waste materials are hard to be fully recycled and such materials’ quality would worsen with repeated recycling, he said, adding that circular products’ production processes would also consume water and electricity.
Lin also called for the use of total soil contaminant analysis to evaluate whether waste soil backfilling would be harmful.
The toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) has been used by environmental authorities to judge whether the waste is hazardous or general business waste, he said.
However, it only tests heavy metal leaching from waste materials under weakly acidic conditions and does not assess soil contaminant levels, he added.
Citing the example of furnace slag illegally dumped on fields in Tainan’s Houbi District (後壁), Lin said the city government judged that the fields are “suitable for recultivation” as TCLP data were within safe limits.
The data cannot be used to demonstrate that the soil was not contaminated or not harmful to human health, Lin said, also urging stricter penalties for illegal dumping.
The disposal fees of excavated or waste soil range from NT$3,000 to NT$4,500 per cubic meter, while the penalty for illegal dumping stipulated in the current act is NT$60,000 for most cases.
That means waste disposal operators can make the money as long as their illegal backfilling amounts to at least one-20th the size of a basketball court at a depth of 1m, he said.
Environmental Management Administration Deputy Director-General Lin Chien-san (林健三) said that the ministry would take responsibility for revising regulations and strictly implement them.
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