TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The amount of waste on Taiwan’s coastlines has been reduced by nearly 60% over the past three years, but domestically produced plastic waste that is mostly from fisheries continues to wash up on shorelines.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that 14 coastal waste “hotspots” were surveyed, and showed that the waste on Taiwan’s shorelines has been reduced from 2,294 tons to 967 tons over the past three years. The agency also said that from 2020 to the end of 2022, 179,000 tons of waste has been cleared from Taiwan’s shores.
Environmental consulting firm Indigo Waters carried out a separate survey and estimated that the amount of waste on Taiwan’s shorelines was 955 tons. They surveyed 10 sites, and showed the shorelines of Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi, and Tainan were the dirtiest, accounting for 26% of the waste, followed by the Kaohsiung-Pingtung section at 11%, and Taiwan’s east coast at 5%.
They also found that the plastic bottles and cans on Taiwan’s shores were largely domestically produced, accounting for up to 90% in Pingtung, and more than half in Yunlin and Chiayi, per UDN. Kinmen was the outlier in this regard with 90% of the waste coming from China.
Indigo Waters CEO Yen Ning (顏寧) also said that fisheries produced about 60% of Taiwan’s coastal waste through discarded buoys, fishing lines, and other detritus. She said that determining which counties or cities the domestically produced bottles came from could be difficult, and that the waste may be coming from other areas via river flows.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) commissioned the surveys as part of Cabinet’s Salute to the Sea policy that aims to protect, improve knowledge of, and improve accessibility to Taiwan’s marine environment.