While the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) is urging the public to recycle computers and printers, representatives of recycling companies said yesterday that printer manufacturers should treasure reusable resources and offer solutions to problems pertaining to the lack of qualified hazardous industrial waste handlers.
Since the EPA began to recycle used printers in April, the low recycling rate -- 10 percent -- has been attributed to the public's lack of environmental awareness.
EPA officials said that 1 million new printers were purchased in Taiwan in 1999 and 1.2 million in 2000. In the past seven years, the EPA estimates, more than four million printers were sold in Taiwan.
"Waste is actually a kind of misplaced resource," Chang Juu-en (張祖恩), the EPA's deputy administrator, said yesterday as he inspected recycling companies located in Kaohsiung County's Tafa Industrial Complex (大發工業區).
Chang said that most components of used printers -- such as plastics, electrical wires, chips, batteries and toner cartridges -- could be turned into usable metal and non-metal materials.
Shine Team Co Ltd (上祈企業公司), one of three recycling companies contracted by the EPA's Recyclable Resources Foundation, recycled an average of 2,450 used printers monthly between June and December last year.
Tu Kuang-yu (
Since June last year, machines purchased from Germany have dismantled and broken up about 30,000 used computers, printers and monitors every month.
"Precious metals such as iron, copper and aluminum -- that are collected here -- are sent to smelters for further treatment, which can make them reusable," Tu said.
Tu said that reducing waste was a way to produce new resources. For example, recycled toner cartridges in printers are usually sent back to manufacturers for reuse or sold to plastics companies for use in new products.
"It's too bad that most printer manufacturers are reluctant to take back and re-use recycled toner cartridges due to their customers' habit of liking the new and loathing the old," Tu said yesterday.
Tu said that half of the cartridges in scrapped inkjet and laser printers are actually not damaged at all.
The concept of reloading cartridges has been promoted in some countries, such as Japan and Australia.
A recent study sponsored by the New South Wales government's Waste Planning and Management Fund shows that 400 remanufacturers in Australia replace worn parts and refill recycled cartridges. They said this process can be repeated up to 10 times.
Meanwhile, Tu said, an unsolved problem is the increasing amount of accumulated hazardous waste, such as fluorescent powder and TFT-LCD display monitors from laptop computers.
Each monitor, Tu said, contains about 0.3mg of fluorescent powder. Due to the lack of qualified waste handlers, roughly 280kg of fluorescent powder is temporarily stored at the factory site. Some of them do recycle TFT-LCD display monitors, Tu said.
The EPA's deputy administrator Chang said that the Cabinet is expected to soon approve a draft plan to establish an environmental technology park, where professional industrial waste handlers would be encouraged to run business.
Chang said that after it is set up, solutions to the problems recycling companies face now, would be available.
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,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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