Taiwan Trash Culture

Every society, no less city or neighborhood has its own trash culture. Taipei’s density, small apartments and narrow side streets mean that like South Philadelphia efficient collection is done by hand in small vehicles. Rather than weekly pick-up from in front of homes or buildings collection is provided six days a week from 4,000 locations across the city.  Residents are supposed to pay for a City approved bag. Based on my observations in the Daan neighborhood fewer than half of residents use the bags, most bringing their own bags, emptying the bags in the truck and keeping the bag. Where they throw their own bags? I am not sure.  

Nightly trash collection in the Daan neighborhood of Taipei

A recycling truck follows the trash truck

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the whole system is that collection vehicles traverse the city with what we would recognize as an ice cream truck’s tune to alert residents that it’s collection time.  

The system of charging for trash and providing daily collection works even if it is not collecting the revenue it could, with rubbish down 62 percent since the 1997 introduction.  I’ve seen no illegal dumping in my travels around the City. When I asked officials about the issue they told that with and enforcement team of 200 that work in shifts 24/7. Taipei’s trash culture was the topic of a Washington Post op-ed that is worth a read.