Waste to energy or waste to entertainment

Perhaps the Beitou waste to energy facility should be known as a waste to entertainment plant.  Beitou is home to the world’s only smoke stack with a revolving restaurant attached. The Touch Stars Restaurant rises nearly 100 feet above the confluence of the Tamshui and Keelung rivers is reported to be a hot ticket on Valentine’s Day. Touch Stars serves Shanghai style food while rotating 360 degrees each hour. Beitou is not the world's only waste to energy tourist attraction, Vienna’s WTE plant is regularly featured in guidebooks and charges 10 euros for a tour. 

photo by Susan Curry

 

To be build community support for the Beitou facility Taipei City government used land adjacent to the facility to build a swimming complex, pre-school and kindergarten, fitness center and a park with an eternal dancing flame statue. The facilities are free to residents living within five kilometers of the plant. When I visited on a Tuesday afternoon it was well used and during weekends it receives thousands of visitors.   

Map of Beitou community facilities built around the WTE plant

The Eternal Dancing Flame statue of Beitou

The symbolism of the eternal dancing flame may turn out have been premature if rubbish keeps declining there may not be enough to fuel the facility.  When I ask officials if they might go the way of Sweden and important trash, I was told me that the public would never allow it.

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.

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.