IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i3p1557-d737292.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Wen-Tien Tsai

    (Graduate Institute of Bioresources, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung 912, Taiwan)

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).

Suggested Citation

  • Wen-Tien Tsai, 2022. "Multimedia Pollution Prevention of Mercury-Containing Waste and Articles: Case Study in Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-14, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1557-:d:737292
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1557/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/3/1557/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wei-Sheng Chen & Chien-Ching Chi & Cheng-Han Lee, 2023. "Stabilization of Waste Mercury with Sulfide through the Ball-Mill Method and Heat Treatment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-12, June.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:3:p:1557-:d:737292. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.