Industry profits while dumping waste into farmland; legislators demand that ministries come up with real solutions

Waste dumping is running rampant across the country, with many remote townships even becoming havens for waste disposal. Legislators Hung Sun-han, Chen Su-yueh and Su Chiao-hui jointly invited civic groups, waste-cleaning operators, the Environmental Protection Administration, the Industrial Development Bureau and the Construction and Planning Agency to hold a public hearing yesterday (2/2), hoping to solve waste management institutionally and put it into practice, and to end the coddling of these chaotic practices. (Is Changhua becoming a haven for illegal waste dumping? Civic groups call for establishing a system)

Legislators: Waste is not a single incident; the government should face it squarely

Hung Sun-han went to Changhua for an on-site inspection last Saturday (1/30). He described the current state of waste dumping as "beacons burning everywhere," with Provincial Highway 61 like a broad avenue for waste tipping! "Dumping waste like this makes you feel hopeless, as if you can dump anything anywhere and no one cares!" He said with deep sorrow that because the situation is so serious and Changhua is by no means an isolated case, he convened the public hearing and invited relevant parties to solve the problem.

Hung Sun-han analysed that waste has two major problems: dumping that migrates from place to place, and insufficient processing capacity. If the government does not establish regulations and enforcement mechanisms that can be followed, it can only keep chasing after lawbreaking operators and putting out fires. Order in the industry should be established to give everyone a legal and safe path.

Legislator Chen Su-yueh said local waste-cleaning operators want to comply with the regulations, but there is simply nowhere for the waste to go. Although the Ministry of Economic Affairs has tried to reuse waste, the current processing capacity is clearly severely insufficient.

Legislator Su Chiao-hui said bluntly that she has seen the difficulties of waste processing at the local level, for example there is nowhere to throw away tires, mattresses cannot be recycled, sound-and-light toys contain IC boards and metal and cannot be recycled as plastic, and waste collection fees keep rising. She believes that if new recycling and processing technologies can be introduced, a new industry can be created.

Ministries: "Reuse" has already shown results; legislators criticise it as "just moving things from here to there" with no real management at all

Hsu Chih-lun, a senior inspector at the Environmental Protection Administration, explained that in 2020, Taiwan had 19.51 million tonnes of industrial waste awaiting processing, of which as much as 84.94% could be reused. The Environmental Protection Administration has already guided manufacturers to install boilers that convert combustible waste into Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF), and estimates that by the end of next year a total of 15 manufacturers will be able to join the processing ranks.

At the same time, the Environmental Protection Administration has also taken stock of environmental protection land together with the Ministry of Economic Affairs and other ministries, and has already released 15 hectares of land, hoping to increase the capacity of processing facilities. It has also guided operators to use recycled pellets in local public works and port-area land reclamation and filling, and has carried out refined management of reuse institutions, tracking through to the final user and place of use, and suspending the privileges of those with excessively high inventories of recycled products.

Chou Chung-pin, chief secretary of the Industrial Development Bureau under the Ministry of Economic Affairs, reported that the Industrial Development Bureau has increased the frequency and intensity of inspections of high-risk reuse institutions, and has matched reuse products with the international green supply chain. These various applications of turning waste into energy have all shown results. Chen Chi-ming, deputy director-general of the Construction and Planning Agency, admitted that construction mixtures in the declaration system need to be further subdivided, and that in the future