Taipei reducing its rubbish

Early this week I had the opportunity to meet with Lung-sheng Chang, a 1975 Eisenhower Fellow, and graduate of the Penn’s School of Design. Mr. Chang went on to play an instrumental role in founding Taiwan’s National Park System, served as Minister of Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Agency and founded the Urban Regeneration R&D Foundation.  

On island that is about the size of Maryland and Delaware  with the population of 23 million (nearly the size of Texas) land is valuable commodity.  When the island has no native fossil fuel sources any step toward energy independence is key. In 1990s Taipei developed a number of waste to energy plants to process its residential rubbish into energy.  Mr. Chang considers his most important contribution as EPA Minister to be the development of Taipei's waste to energy plants. These facilities are not the pollution belching incinerators of the mid-20^th century.  Using and repeatedly upgrading the air pollution technology the facilities have maintained low emissions as Taipei's overall air quality has improved.  The 4.8 megawatt plant uses the electricity to power the facility with the excess sold to state power monopoly.  

I had the opportunity to tour the Beitou (or Pei-Tou) facility with its managers and Environmental Protection Agency officials. We discussed the operations, which are reviewed here. More importantly, we discussed the policies that have been instituted over the last two decades which have dramatically increased recycling and reduced rubbish. Per capita waste was down 62 percent between 1997 and 2011.  

In the year 2000 Taipei introduced a pay as you throw system. Residents purchase bags for rubbish disposal at 7-11s and other convenience stores. In Taipei there are frequently convenience stores every 500 feet. The bags which cost between US$0.05 for a small household bag and US$1.80 for a large contractor sized bag. 

You can see my post about trash collection in Taiwan to see their very different approach to trash collection. For detailed review of waste management in Taiwan and Taipei check out, “Towards Zero Waste Society: New Management Policies for Solid Waste Disposal in Chinese Taipei.” 

Philadelphia had our own flirtation with a pay as you throw system. Is pay as you throw a solution for Philadelphia? Probably not, but there is no question that if you want to reduce the cost to tax payers of trash removal putting a price on it works.