Due to the vast numbers of people here and the teeny tiny space, Taiwan has some very special regulations about garbage.
The first thing one would need to know is that there is no garbage can you pull to the side of the street. The garbage man comes around once a day to collect everyone's garage. He comes to our corner at 10:35pm. If you want to throw out your garbage, you have to take it out at that time. Some of the garbage trucks sing so you know they are coming; unfortuantely ours does not. So at 10:35, there is a flow of people as everyone in the neighborhood rushes out with their garbage. Its like community time; people stand and visit, catch up on local gossip, I guess. There are also a variety of 'garbage pickers'; not to be rude but thats what they do. They snoop through everyone's garbage and take out any recyclyables that people have missed. They will also take away your cardboard, etc, so you don't have to throw it in the truck. (They must get paid for collecting it and bringing it in.)
Everything has to be sorted; paper, tin/aluminum, styrofoam, light plastic, heavy plastic, glass, scrap food, and real garbage.
Mondays and Fridays are paper and cardboard day. A special truck comes around with the regular truck and picks up all the paper/cardboard.
Tuesdays and Saturdays are styrofoam, plastic, and tin days. On these days there are three trucks that come around; one for each thing.
There is no garbage pick up on Wednesdays or Sundays.
Aside from the recyclables, everyday you can bring your scrap food and regular garbage (except Wednesdays and Sundays, of course). All your table scraps, etc, that you have been saving in your house (ewww, I know) get dumped into these big blue containers to be used as pig feed or compost. You dump out your grody goodies into these big pails and either throw out the bag you were saving it in our else take it back to your place to rinse out and use again. All regular garbage, such dirty tissues and anything else you don't know where it belongs, goes in special bags you have to buy.
Its funny to schedule your evenig plans around wether or not you have to take out the garbage that night or not!
2 comments:
I remember those days, that sucks!
sounds like a less wasteful system than the typical North American one...at least everything there seems to be reused/recycled when it can be. We just throw everything in a big bin and never think about it again. Perhaps Canada could learn something here.
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