On 2 February 2021, the EPA Minister Tzi-Chin Chang and Bo Mønsted, Director of the Trade Council of Denmark in Taiwan, jointly kicked off the Taiwan-Denmark Environmental Education Collaboration and the Index Award Exhibition in Songshan Cultural and Creative Park.

Director Mønsted said in his speech, "In the fast-changing world nowadays, cross-national collaboration is the right path to make breakthroughs under the existing framework. The Trade Council of Denmark's greatest mission has always been to promote such collaboration between Taiwan and Denmark. It is wonderful today to see that the EPA has continually worked with the Index Project. It demonstrates Taiwan's non-stop efforts in environmental education and shows Taiwanese people like and accept the Danish way of thinking and environmental designs. We hope that such collaborations can help Taiwan to breed new generations of design talents that can think of new ways to solve the various environmental problems faced by today's society."

Minister Chang also said in the kick-off ceremony, "This exhibition demonstrates how environmental education in Denmark combines design, innovation, and commercialization in response to global climate change and other sustainability issues. Taiwan has since 2014 held environmental design competitions once every two years. During these four competitions, submissions increased from 513 works in the first competition to 919 in the latest one, touching on local and global challenges such as sustainable development, climate change, air pollution, an aging population, and so on. Award-winning designs such as 'turning diapers to gold,' eco-friendly water treatment systems, and light-weight, energy-conserving bricks have all been commercialized and are already helping to solve environmental problems."

Fifteen designs were chosen from among 2015, 2017, and 2019 Index Award winners (final selection) to be displayed during this exhibition. These designs' environmental issue areas included energy, climate change, sustainable development, food security, environmental education, and major illnesses. It is also worth mentioning that all these works centered around the concept of a circular economy, which the EPA has also been promoting in its recent policies. For instance: clothes made from recycled polyesters (named Petit Pli) can be worn repeatedly by children aged from nine months to four years; Plastix is an example of reutilization of marine waste plastics; Pinatex is a fabric made of pineapple leaf fibers; Greenwave shows an innovative model of aquaculture.

Excerpt from Major Environmental Policies, Feb 2021