Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) Minister Lee Ying-yuan (李應元) yesterday called on business representatives to join the agency’s “painless reduction of plastics” campaign to make Taiwan “a plastic-free island” within 10 years.
“Starting from January next year, 80,000 stores will stop giving out plastic bags for free, which can reduce plastic bag consumption by about 1.5 billion bags per year,” Lee told a news conference outside the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store (新光三越百貨) in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義).
Although 1.5 billion is just one-10th of Taiwan’s annual plastic bag consumption, people could help the nation become plastic-free by cutting plastic bag use by 15 billion bags in a decade, he said.
Breeze Charity Foundation chief executive officer Chen Meei-ting (陳美汀) said Breeze Group (微風集團) replaced plastic bags with paper bags at its department stores across the nation 16 years ago.
The campaign’s spokesman, actor Kuo Tzu-chien (郭子乾), suggested that the EPA increase the price of plastic bags to NT$100 each to discourage their use, while Lee said NT$1 per bag was the bottom line.
The EPA will also ban the manufacturing and import of cosmetics and detergents that contain microplastic beads from next year, while their sale will be banned from July next year, Lee said.
Lee said the plastic bag reduction plan was admired when he explained it to people in New York and Washington late last month.
At the news conference, the EPA auctioned three pieces of wooden furniture salvaged from landfill sites.
Chen, Holy Yang (楊盛傑), who is a member of the Breeze Group, and Ecomax Textile Co (富勝紡織) chairman Mark Ke (柯漢哲) bought the furniture.
Expressing his support for the policy, Ke said that in the 1990s, Ecomax was the nation’s first company to develop a method to turn plastic bottles into textiles.
Developing recycled fiber has been “a long, difficult and solitary road,” but he is glad to see the government and public engage in plastic reduction, Ke said.
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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