The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) was yesterday accused of poor industrial waste management, which legislators said has led to the illegal use of slag and toxic waste as building materials.
A draft waste reduction and recycling act (廢棄物減量及循環利用法 ) and draft amendments to the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法) were the topics of a question-and-answer session at the Legislative Yuan’s Social Welfare and Environmental Hygiene Committee.
The draft bill is set to combine the Waste Disposal Act with the Resource Reuse and Recycling Act (資源回收再利用法) to define different types of industrial waste and make the EPA the sole authority responsible for industrial waste management, as industrial waste is currently managed by a total of 10 different government agencies, and each has its own rules and regulations.
However, an EPA report that had only an eight-line paragraph in response to the draft bill, which said the bill is complicated and requires more communication with the public and between government units, sparked criticism from lawmakers.
“The mismanagement of industrial waste results from waste being falsely classified as products, overlapping responsibilities and an inability to track the flow of waste materials. The most pressing issue is to come up with a set of unambiguous definitions of different types of industrial waste and their treatment methods,” Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Man-li (陳曼麗) said.
Industrial Development Bureau Director Wu Ming-ji (吳明機) said that only three of the nation’s 62 industrial parks and one out of 13 science parks have toxic waste management centers.
“According to the Waste Disposal Act, industrial parks and science parks cannot begin operations unless waste management facilities are in place, but authorities of the parks do not care about the act,” New Power Party Legislator Hung Tzu-yung (洪慈庸) said.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT
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