Waste management
With "Letter to Elise" - Beethoven, or "The prayer of a virgin" of Tekla badarzewska baranowska, the life of the Taiwanese is punctuated by the comings and goings of the garbage trucks every evening.
« No, it's not the ice cream man ! »
A nightly ritual during which we get rid of and recycle our daily waste. Garbage in Taiwan is always in the right place and at the right time. Indeed, while in France we can find garbage cans or dedicated places at every street corner, it is not the same situation here. I will speak mostly about Taipei since I stayed there most of my time. With the exception of some places (Ximen for example), there are very few garbage cans in the streets, few dedicated places, and when you are a foreigner this can be very disturbing.
This waste management, besides the ecological interest, is according to my research a way to avoid potential sanitary problems. However, over time it has become a sort of trademark here. The message I get when I walk through clean streets without garbage cans is "if you don't want to be bothered with your own waste, not knowing where to throw it away, well... stop producing it."
Zero waste is the goal in Taipei
Which requirements ?
In order, for your bag, to be thrown into the truck, you must have a tax stamp on it. A kind of sticker on the bag that will leave you in no doubt once you see it. It looks a bit like the authentication sticker on some New Era hats, something you can't fake.
Which cost ?
Here there are no taxes on waste, you pay for each bag, according to the quantity of waste produced. You will find this type of bag at the 7-Eleven. I think they are all blue (bag of non-recyclable waste).
How to sort out ?
This is similar to the French system, one compost bag and one non-recyclable bag for regular household waste. About recyclable packaging (cardboard and plastic), they must be brought together to the truck without a garbage bag. For cardboard and paper, it will be necessary to wait for a specific day which will depend on your location I guess. The best is to ask around you in order to avoid bringing everything for nothing ^^
Be careful, the glass will have to be thrown in a specific place, as well as batteries, electronic stuffs, etc. (I don't have any information on this matter)
How often do garbage trucks pass through Taipei ?
It seems to me that the time and frequency may vary from a place to another one. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in this field. On my side I live in a building in which a garbage room is provided with specific boxes according to the waste and I don't need to follow the classic scheme. This is really advantageous but not everyone have such luck. I have to pay a little extra every month on my rent to benefit from this service. On the other hand, I had to learn the system a little bit when I was working in a restaurant. That's why I have some information to share on this subject.
The purpose of this article is to give you an idea of the Taiwanese system, which I consider as super efficient ! A little anecdote : for the poorest people, it is possible to collect the waste which would have been thrown in the street to earn a small amount of money. This allows them to live I guess. It's a really great system and the streets are really clean thanks to this idea. By the way, if you have some aluminium waste, don't be surprised to see some people coming to your approach and take it to get some coins from the government ^^ Even in front of the garbage truck ! As a matter of fact, we can see people riding bikes around the city with mountains of recyclable waste... it's sometimes pretty impressive !
