TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Greenpeace's "Rainbow Warrior" ship arrived in Taiwan on Oct. 28 ahead of the Global Plastics Treaty, which will take place in Busan, South Korea, at the end of November.
Greenpeace revealed the survey results of microplastic pollution on beaches around the Linyuan Petrochemical Industrial Park in Kaohsiung. It called upon the government to face up to global petrochemical overcapacity and review plastic production policies, per a press release.
The Greenpeace survey found that beaches near Kaohsiung's Linyuan Petrochemical Industrial Park, including Cijin Beach (旗津沙灘), Cijin Shell Museum (旗津貝殼館), Cijin Wind Power Park (旗津風車公園), and Linyuan Zhongmen Beach (林園中門沙灘) had a high density of microplastic pollution defined as five millimeters.
To compile Greenpeace’s latest survey, it collaborated with Shiu Ruei-feng (許瑞峯), associate professor from the Institute of Marine Environment and Ecology at National Taiwan Ocean University, and Hsu Hung-chu (許弘莒), professor at the Department of Marine Environment and Engineering at National Sun Yat-sen University.
In two samplings in August and September this year, individual locations at Linyuan Zhongmen Beach found one kilogram of sediment contained as many as 86.23 and 96.63 microplastic particles, respectively.

Hsu said that plastic particles from manufacturers were detected during the two beach samplings. These raw materials are mostly made of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), and ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer (EVA). They are all lightweight plastics that can float on the water and are easily spread through water bodies.
To understand the possibility of rivers importing plastic particles, the research team increased sampling points on the south and north banks of the Gaoping River outlet. The results found that the sampling points on both sides of the Linyuan River outlet on the north bank had the highest density of samples. One kilogram of sediment contained 31.17 microplastic particles.
Greenpeace East Asia Taipei’s campaigner Chang Kai-ting (張凱婷) said that due to the small size and lightweight nature, microplastic granules (nurdles) can easily escape into the natural environment. Many come from drainage pipes near petrochemical industrial areas.
According to a report by Fidra, an international organization that tracks the release of plastic particles, approximately 10 trillion pieces of microplastic particles, amounting to 450,000 tons, are scattered into the natural environment during the manufacturing or transportation process every year. It is almost impossible to remove microplastic pollution from the world’s oceans.
Chang said that although Taiwan has been making progress in reducing plastics, with some policies even at the forefront of East Asian countries, it still lacks strict controls on the petrochemical industry, which is the source of plastic production. Chang said that 99% of the raw materials to make plastics are fossil fuels, including oil and natural gas, and called on the government to review petrochemical policies.
After docking in Kaohsiung, the "Rainbow Warrior" will travel to the ocean discharge pipe outside the Linyuan Petrochemical Industrial Zone to conduct more sediment sampling. In the future, it will use ocean current model analysis to measure the diffusion and accumulation of microplastics.