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Quentin Brasseur 15:14:44

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Quentin Brasseur 17:39:28

Dear all,

I believe I'm in the right place to share this but this is my first post here so please let me know if I broke any rule. Short presentation: Quentin, business consultant based in Belgium. I'm in Taipei atm and probably moving here sooner than I expected (covid19 impact).

Post is long so *TLDR version*: this is an idea to boost the adoption of the DIY sterilization technique promoted by the government by the population, save millions of masks/month, improve mask supply mgmt, reduce their environmental impact and get more data to help authorities tweak their policy. I don't have the skills to do it and couldn't form a team (after a hackathon attempt). I share it here, hoping it could be useful as I have to give it up. Happy to get thoughts or info on masks saving initiatives.
 
*Long version:*
Taiwan promotes the DIY mask sterilizing technique for rice cooker (ministers communication, session with Taiwan Food & Drugs Administration, ads in pharmacies, etc.). The goal is to save strategic resources without endangering the population. It would also reduce the environmental impact of single use masks. 18 disposable for 23m+ Taiwanese, we're potentially talking about c. 400.000.000 masks going to wastes every month.

Whether the population massively sterilizes/re-uses masks is not clear. I never met anyone doing it, nor did I see figures on it so it seems unlikely. Nonetheless, this solution could save (dozens of) millions of masks every month so it deserves building stronger grounds.

I believe the issue now is to engage the population in this practice. Taiwan's way to rely on the "smart/digital society" approach is inspiring and I wondered how it could be applied to (1) boost the adoption of the practice and (2) be able to evaluate its impact (get metrics) which would provide another tool to help the authorities.

The attached file develops the idea. For the story, I submitted it to a hackathon which selected it but I wasn't able to form a team and had to give up on the first day (I don't have code skills). Some people are interested in helping but no commitment to develop. I'm only interested in helping and saving masks… selfishly hoping millions masks saved in Taiwan could help my country, Belgium, was victim of frauds (some masks never arrived, other were not complying with safety standards).
 
Thanks for reading - happy to collect any thoughts on ways to save masks or get information on initiatives doing that. Best,

Sean Wu 23:44:23

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