To solve problems relating to industrial waste disposal, the EPA, the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), and the Council of Agriculture (COA) jointly took inventory of waste and its flow, analyzed the occurrences and causes of illegal dumping, and proposed solutions vis-a-vis the issue of insufficient processing capacity and the issue of strengthening management. It is expected that waste in temporary storage will be completely disposed of by 2032.
The EPA, MOEA, NSTC, MOI, and COA met to discuss the problems regarding the disposal of industrial waste. In regard to construction waste, the EPA and MOI will jointly handle it with the MOI responsible for listing and tracking the flows of construction spoil, while the EPA responsible for tracking the flows of construction waste, listing enterprises of certain scale for control and requiring them to submit waste disposal plans and to report the flows of waste. As for the home remodeling industry, supporting documents should be submitted regarding the origins and destinations of the materials utilized and checked by environmental protection authorities at the backend to ensure proper disposal.
In addition, to accelerate the disposal of construction waste, the EPA is promoting the recycling of construction materials by sorting out materials, such as bricks and concrete blocks, and sending them to spoil storage sites or reusing them as land-filling materials. The EPA is also working with port authorities to promote the use of these materials as land-filling materials in port areas. At present, Taipei Port is accepting spoil from private constructions for landfilling. Moreover, the EPA is assisting boiler and cement kiln owners in reusing waste wood, increasing disposal capacity by 179,000 metric tons per year. An equilibrium between waste wood generation and disposal capacity is expected to be reached by the end of 2022.
As for combustible waste found in illegal waste dumping cases, the EPA has urged industrial competent authorities to release land designated for environmental protection use in existing industrial and science parks for the establishment of waste processing facilities. For newly established industrial and science parks, industrial competent authorities are requested to plan for the establishment of waste processing facilities in the development stage as part of the environmental impact assessment.
In addition, the EPA has requested that industrial competent authorities assist enterprises to complete the establishment of 12 waste processing facilities so as to gradually increase the overall processing capacity year by year. It is expected that an equilibrium between waste generation and processing capacity will be reached by 2023. Prior to that, the EPA has devised short-term response measures, including formulating operation guidelines for waste storage in public landfills or in other off-plant sites and requesting local environmental protection bureaus to provide land in public landfills or requesting the MOEA to provide land designated for environmental protection use in industrial parks to help store industrial waste temporarily.
After the processing facilities promoted by the aforementioned competent authorities are gradually established, the temporarily stored waste will be effectively disposed of. The EPA will also continue to promote waste-to-fuel conversion by diverting industrial waste that cannot be recycled effectively due to its material value but has high calorific value to appropriate disposal channels, increasing the overall disposal capacity for industrial waste.
Sources: EPA
