Multimedia Pollution Prevention of Mercury-Containing Waste and Articles: Case Study in Taiwan

Wen-Tien Tsai
Additional contact information
Wen-Tien Tsai: Graduate Institute of Bioresources, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung 912, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: In response to the Minamata Convention on Mercury, effective 16 August 2017, the Taiwan government in recent years started to implement the sustainable material management of mercury-containing waste and articles. This was completed by a cross-ministerial collaboration for preventing the adverse effects of mercury on human health and the environment, based on the multimedia approach. The legislative or regulatory frameworks on the control and prevention of mercury emissions and releases have been established in environmental distributions, including air, water, soil, waste, food, and article (or commodity). Therefore, the central authorities included the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), Council of Agriculture (COA), Ministry of Health and Welfare (MOHW), Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA), and Ministry of Labor (MOL). Furthermore, the implementation plans covered the reduction in mercury-containing products by restricted use and bans on its use, remediation of soil and groundwater for mercury-pollution sites, control of stationary source emissions, environmental monitoring, and compulsory recovery of mercury from electronic waste such as waste lightings. A successful case study on the recovery of mercury from electronic waste using a thermal treatment, and its capture control by activated carbon, was also addressed in this work. Due to the effectiveness of source control in Taiwan, the annual reported amount of mercury emissions from the stationary air pollution sources indicated a decreasing trend from 1.989 metric tons in 2016 to 1.760 metric tons in 2019. More significantly, the ministerial collaboration in implementing the Convention in Taiwan also echoed the United Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 for sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Keywords: mercury; sustainable material management; cross-ministerial implementation; regulatory measure; Taiwan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1557/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1557/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1557-:d:737292

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().