yet biology professor JWC Wong is leading, at public subvented expense, a trip to Taiwan to see…………… incinerators
Taiwan
Waste Disposal Act,
Mandatory recycling
And
Currently there are 24 incinerators operating in
Taiwan, and they receive 60 percent of the nation’s
municipal solid waste and 40 percent of its industrial
waste. Nonetheless, since 2004 the incinerators have
been facing a shortage of materials to burn as well
as problems due to community complaints about the
emissions. The three incinerators in Taipei had
to cut their operations by half, at least partly
because there were not enough materials to
burn.1
Furthermore, the government promotion of
ash “recycling” in construction and pavement work
represents a serious environmental liability in Taiwan,
given that many toxics remain in those ashes. Since
many companies are not willing to use the ash in their
own pavement, and there is not enough storage space,
the ash is often spread in places like farms, posing a
huge environmental threat.
Thanks to the community’s passionate
resistance to waste incineration, Taiwan has not fully
implemented its original plan to build many new
burners, and the amount of waste incinerated in the
country has remained fairly constant since 2002.
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