export | The Adobo Chronicles

Tofu vendor, left, and durian vendor, right

TAIPEI, Taiwan (The Adobo Chronicles® ) – The Taiwanese government was pleasantly surprised when all of a sudden, its exports of tofu (soybean curd) and durian, a tropical fruit, skyrocketed. This, in just the last two weeks.

International demand for these two exports increased more than 200% with orders coming from across the globe — from The Netherlands to Australia.

What was more puzzling is the fact that importers are flying into Taiwan to personally pick up their shipment. In addition, they were buying the tofu and durian only from specific vendors.

After an extensive market analysis and investigation, Taiwan’s Ministry of Trade and Commerce traced the sudden export surge to these two vendors (see photo).

Both the tofu and durian vendors told The Adobo Chronicles® that their goods are all on backorder at the moment.

Ontario, Canada (The Adobo Chronicles) – A total of fifty 40-foot container vans of garbage recently arrived in Manila’s International Container Port. It was supposed to be an export of scrap plastic materials for recycling, consigned to a Metro Manila trading firm by a Canadian company identified as Chronic Plastics.

It turns out that the shipment contained mostly toxic garbage, and was in violation of the Philippines’ Tariff and Customs Code, better known as the “Toxic Substances and Hazardous Wastes Control Act of 1990.”

Alerts were promptly issued on the shipment because the consignee had submitted incorrect documents for the importation, which has a declared value of over $220,000.

Ariel Nepomuceno, customs deputy commissioner for enforcement, warned “this junk dumped in the Philippines could pose biohazard risks to our people.”

Both the Bureau of Customs and the consignee firm have asked the Canadian shipper to take back the garbage. However, Chronic Plastics laughed the request off, saying that it has a policy of “No return, no exchange.”

A spokesperson for Chronic Plastics said that all sales are final, especially for garbage waste. “The only way we can accept a return is if the Philippines can assure us that the return shipment will be in the exact same condition as when it first left the Canadian port,” he said.

That doesn’t seem to be possible, as it was reported that garbage juice is now leaking from the container vans. It’s been sitting for almost a year now at the Customs container yard and shipping it back to Canada will take another 3 months.