The Ocean Affairs Council staged a forum on the blue economy Sept. 11 in Taipei City to showcase Taiwan’s innovative techniques for governing ocean waste.
The event brought together experts from across academic disciplines, governmental agencies and industrial sectors within Taiwan and officials from the representative offices of India, Thailand and the Philippines, including Director General Manharsinh Laxmanbhai Yadav of the India-Taipei Association.
The OAC said that the U.N. considers marine debris to be a global crisis, which lends urgency to the issue, adding that Taiwan set up the Marine Debris Recycling Coalition in 2021 to realize the goals of zero waste and environmental sustainability through public and private efforts to link the upstream and downstream industries and build a recycling chain for waste resources.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, OAC Deputy Minister Wu Mei-hung said that as a trailblazer in global marine waste governance and technology, Taiwan would continue collaborating with its neighbors in the Indo-Pacific to address the increasingly severe challenges, adding that domestic marine debris businesses would inject new energy into the developing international blue economy.
The OAC said that Yadav proposed the creation of a framework for marine conservation to effectively tackle the issue of waste. In the view of the ITA head, India and Taiwan, working together, could convert the challenge of waste management into an economic opportunity and set a global example for sustainable marine governance.
During the conference, various Taiwan companies and research institutions shared how they have successfully recycled garbage pulled from the ocean to produce useful commodities. A manager from Taipei-based Far Eastern New Century talked about how the company’s polyester unit recycles PET bottles into high value-added products, the council added. (POC-E)
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