Taiwan has always been deficient at disposing of its unwanted waste. A brave new initiative by the Taipei City Govern ment may be the first step in turning the ship around.
Stephen Shen is the director of Taipei City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and he looks like a man who has just fought the good fight. "It was a battle we had to win," he says of the city government's recent changeover to a revolutionary new system of trash collection. He is pleased, and with good reason. If the scheme he and his team have worked so hard to perfect catches fire in the public mind, it could well inspire a whole new way of looking at rubbish disposal in Taiwan.
No one doubts the seriousness of this problem. For the past three decades, Taiwan has slowly been sinking beneath the waves of a sea of rubbish. According to the ROC's Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), the amount of garbage produced here has nearly doubled over the last ten years. In 1998, the island's households produced a daily average of around 24,740 metric tons of garbage. The densely populated island, one-fourth the size of Florida and only twice the size of Wales, is mostly mountainous terrain, all but inaccessible for purposes of landfill construction. So where does the rubbish end up?
There are incinerators, true, but citizens are reluctant to see them built in their neighborhoods, particularly since recent studies have shown that many of Taiwan's incinerators generate unacceptable levels of toxins. Older landfills were poorly constructed, allowing seepage into the soil, and many of the existing 300 or so sites are now full to capacity and beyond. A lot of garbage is tipped into rivers or left to rot in remote rifts and gullies. The possibilities for disease, to say nothing of stench, are painfully obvious. Stir in a further set of problems generated by disposal of hazardous and other industrial waste, stand well back, and try not to inhale.
The Taipei City Government decided it was time to draw a line in the sand. The city's garbage problem stank--in the summer months, literally. In broad terms this is how it originally used to work. Residents would leave their trash in stairwells for collection by private contractors or simply dump it on the street in plastic shopping bags that often split open under the ministrations of the city's stray-dog packs. Except in a few--a very few--civic-minded communities, no attempt was made to sort or recycle trash. Dumpsters were usually full to overflowing by mid-morning. By the time the trash trucks came around in the evening, street pick-up points often resembled nothing more than third-world slums.
The EPA made valiant attempts to educate the public about the merits of recycling. The trouble was, many adults had bad littering habits that proved hard to break, and even in those schools where enterprising teachers sought to inspire their students with respect for the environment, it took years to inculcate good environmental practices.
Then in 1994, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Chen Shui-bian was elected as the island's first opposi tion-party mayor. He embarked on a two-pronged clean-up campaign, designed to encourage recycling and ensure that trash never touched the ground. Under what came to be known as the "Trash-Never-Touch" program, garbage could no longer be left on the sidewalk or in dumpsters; it had to be thrown directly onto trucks. Violators were fined, and trash bags were even opened and inspected for clues as to who was leaving their waste on the sidewalk. The recycling program, on the other hand, known as the "Three-in-One" plan, combined trash classification, recycling, and garbage disposal. The idea was that resi dents should sort out recyclable materials and put them into a special truck that trailed the garbage collectors on two days a week.
These twin initiatives met with a certain amount of success, largely because they enabled residents to dump their recyclables and trash at the same time. But no change was made in the way that people were charged for waste disposal, which was via their bimonthly water bill. Three years later, however, Chen designated six boroughs as trial areas for a pilot scheme in which trash disposal was charged "by the bag." Initial tests went well enough to persuade city officials that the program ought to be extended throughout the city.
Unfortunately, however, politics then took a hand, and the plan had to be aborted after a clash between City Hall and the City Council over trash collection and street-cleaning fees. With no compromise in sight, the administration decided to cancel the collection of trash fees for fiscal 1998. Later the same year, Chen lost his bid for reelection to Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou and never had a chance to resolve the issue.
Despite these reversals, Chen Shui-bian's revolutionary trash plan was far from dead. Incoming Mayor Ma soon realized that, with city landfills nearing their capacity, it was essential to devise a comprehensive plan to reduce solid waste. He also vowed that in the future, people would pay for garbage disposal in proportion to the amount of waste their families and businesses generated. "In doesn't matter who is leading Taipei or its Department of Environmental Protection, 'pay as you throw' is a trend that won't go away," says DEP Director Stephen Shen. Amazingly, all fifty-two members of the Taipei City Council decided to support Ma's plan. "I have never seen such a consensus in this politically riven chamber," says Lo Tsung -sheng, a DPP member and chairman of the Council's Public Safety and Health Committee.
The biggest surprise, however, came the day after the program started. No one was sure what would happen. Sanitation workers and volunteers had worked overtime to explain and enforce the new policy, and when residents complained about shortages of compulsory trash bags, Shen personally called distributors in the middle of the night. "I think I slept about an hour a day for a week!" he recalls with a chuckle. Then finally it was D-Day, and everybody held their breath.
On June 30 this year, the last night of the old regime, Taipei's sanitation workers culled 5,815 tons of trash from the city's streets. The next day saw a whopping 70 percent reduction, and sighs of relief were audible. The overnight switch had been nicknamed "Mission Impossible" and the "Dawn of the Green Revolution" by the media and city officials, but those slick headlines concealed the enormously painstaking preparation that had gone into making the project work.
The mayor had previously mobilized eight city bureaus, over 400 neighborhood leaders, and thousands of volunteers to prepare for every conceivable glitch. Deputy Mayor Ou Chin-der chaired a weekly special committee that ironed out logis tics. Popular TV host Ah-Liang was hired as the official spokesman for the new program and assigned the task of educating the public about its merits. Last but not least, the charismatic mayor starred in TV spots designed to encourage the public to accept the new system.
"Where there's muck there's money," as the old saying goes, and for all the media focus on cleaning up the environment, the fact is that the scheme's main purpose was to overhaul the way the city's inhabitants paid for trash collection. "We've always believed in the concept of 'polluter pays,'" says Mary Chen, secretary-general of the Homemakers' Union and Foun dation, a non-governmental organization. Now that principle has become a reality, at least to the extent that Taipei's citizens are accountable for their own garbage.
In the past, because garbage collection fees were linked to water bills, the more water households or businesses con sumed, the higher their trash collection fees became. That led people to throw things away more or less without thinking. Now, however, citizens must purchase special bags and use them to dispose of their rubbish. The cost of transportation, incineration, and creating and servicing landfills is built into the price of these "official" DEP garbage bags, which are sold in six different sizes at convenience and grocery stores. Since July 1, Taipei's garbage collectors have refused to accept trash not contained in the DEP bags. Those who fail to comply with the rule can be fined up to NT$4,500 (US$145), and the police have been accompanying trash trucks to ensure compliance.
The scheme's major selling point is that residents can save money by sorting out recyclable material like paper, plastic bags, polystyrene, and aluminum cans, because these can be placed in non-DEP bags or containers before being dumped on recycle trucks, which now call three days a week instead of the previous two.
The new scheme makes the cost of disposing of waste very apparent. "In the past, most people would pay for garbage collection by having their water fees automatically debited from their bank accounts," says Li Ching-yuan, Taipei City Council's New Party caucus leader. Such a system was painless but intrinsically unfair. Consider the case of a couple with a newborn child. Mounds of disposable diapers would create much more trash than in other types of three-person households, but the family with the infant would pay no more for garbage collection.
Despite the obvious fairness of the new system--you pay for as many bags as you need, no more, no less--not everyone is convinced. Shetzutao, for instance, is a small peninsula located where the Keelung and Tamsui Rivers meet in northwest Taipei, a location that makes it one of the most flood-prone parts of the city. The area has been designated a flood control zone, hedging it around with building restrictions that hinder economic growth. Across the Keelung River, the chimney of a trash incinerator spews vile odors and clouds of dust that often blow toward Shetzutao. It is in this neighborhood, called "Taipei's Orphan" by its residents, that Mayor Ma's trash policy has met with the most resistance.
On the first day of the program, Shetzutao residents protested what they felt was the city government's indifference to the neighborhood by declining to use the specially marked DEP bags. The next night, they refused to bring their garbage out at all. These demonstrations have now largely subsided, but the anger has not. "Make the mayor live here for a night," says one resident, declining to be named. "Let's see what he has to say then."
What Shetzutao wants, according to neighborhood leader Wang Shun-hui, is compensation. Residents living near the waste incinerator across the Keelung River were paid substantial amounts, and Shetzutao residents see no reason why they should not be treated the same way. "This is a unique area," Wang says. "The city should adopt special laws to accommodate our needs."
The powers in City Hall and the City Council show little sympathy with Wang's frustrations, however. Shetzutao is a relatively small place, but if Taipei's leaders show favoritism toward one neighborhood, others may seek special treatment as well. "The mayor has already stepped up efforts to push for the development of Shetzutao," Shen says. "But we still have to enforce the bag policy." DPP Councilman Lo Tsung-sheng wholeheartedly endorses Ma's firm stance. "A successful policy requires uniformity in implementation," he says. "We cannot tolerate 'one city, two systems.'"
The bags themselves have been another source of more widespread complaints. According to convenience-storeowner Chen Hui-chu, the biggest gripe she hears from customers concerns the cost and shortage of the mandatory bags. "In the week leading up to July 1, I had to place repeat orders with the suppliers three or four times a day," she says, adding that she still had to turn away lots of customers. People also complain that the DEP bags are more expensive than brand-name trash bags.
Taipei City Hall anticipated these problems and instructed four hundred borough leaders to distribute ten thirty-three -liter bags and six NT$55 (US$1.77) trash-bag coupons to all of Taipei's households, free of charge, by the end of June. Complaints to the city and bag vendors became largely a thing of the past. "Now there's no problem stocking up with bags," Chen says. "I get only one or two complaints about prices, maybe once a week."
There have been one or two official grumbles also. Some councilors contend that the public was not educated about the new trash system with sufficient thoroughness. Lo lays the blame at City Hall's door, because Mayor Ma and DEP head Stephen Shen never explained why the bags seemed so expensive. The reason is actually quite simple. When people buy the special bags, they are in effect paying the disposal fee. "The budget the council passed absorbs 100 percent of the cost of producing the actual bags," Lo Tsung-sheng says. "Residents are paying only for the cost of processing the trash."
In reality, while the official bags are more expensive than regular trash bags, the new system saves most families a little money, although the amount is contoversial. A study conducted by the DEP showed that under the old water consumption system, a household of three would pay an average of NT$144 (US$4.65) a month. The new plan causes the monthly fee to drop by about NT$4 (13 cents). Li claims that his own family of five saved about NT$40 (US$1.29) in the first month of implementation. "Residents are actually getting a better deal as long as they do some simple recycling," he says.
And there's the rub. The concept of recycling was not totally unknown in Taipei before the new scheme came into effect. In less affluent times, housewives would sell used paper, cardboard boxes, and bottles to collectors who wheeled carts around neighborhoods. Many communities had a bin for collecting food scraps, which would then be given to the pigs. Apart from those isolated instances, however, the evolution of recycling was distinctly spotty.
The first large-scale, government-sponsored recycling program started in 1989. The EPA, in partnership with a private organization, introduced 1,475 Dutch-made, tub-shaped recycling bins to the city. These came painted in different colors, to indicate the different types of trash they could absorb, and each bin was decorated with eyes and a mouth. During this time, the government stepped up efforts to educate the public on the importance of trash classification and recycling via massive advertising campaigns. Despite initial popularity, however, the giant plastic bins were retired three years later as the result of complaints about their height and sidewalk-hogging size. The "Alien Babies," as they were called in Chinese, failed to solve Taipei's trash problems, but they did raise public consciousness about recycling.
Since July 2 this year, however, there are signs that recycling has caught on with city residents in a much bigger way. A recent report released by the DEP shows that the percentage of recycled trash has climbed to 10.4 percent, up from 2.5 percent before the launch of the new scheme. While officials are pleased with this sharp increase, they are now facing two new problems: shortage of capacity to process inorganic recyclable materials, and the lack of recycling programs for organic waste.
Under the current scheme, the city is supposed to sort out recyclable inorganic materials and sell them to reprocessing companies. But while the city government focused on the collection and processing aspects of the new "per-bag" policy, it overlooked the need to develop a downstream marketing channel to sell the influx of recyclable garbage. According to Stephen Shen, many valuable recyclable materials are still having to be sent to incinerators and landfills, provoking objec tions from the public and members of the city council.
Then there is the organic waste issue. The DEP estimates that 30 percent of household garbage consists of recyclable organic materials, mostly kitchen waste and houseplants. While this can be used for fertilizer and pig feed, the city's informa tion pamphlets list it as "non-recyclable." "We've been flooded with phone calls saying organic waste should be recycled," Mary Chen says. Councilor Lo Tsung-sheng says that he also has received numerous requests from his constituents that the city set up outlets for organic waste.
Help is on the way. The Homemakers' Union and Foundation has been working with several hundred residents to set up thirty-two recycling posts that will gather organic kitchen waste, and it has already located a site where the stuff can be processed into fertilizer. Shen and City Hall have arranged organic waste-collection pilot schemes in two boroughs, while the DEP has plans to produce a cheaper set of bags to be used exclusively for this kind of trash.
So far, so good. But what still causes concern to government leaders, media, and residents is the lingering worry that enthusiasm for the new scheme will wear off. Some fear that sidewalks and less populated areas will once again become illegal dumping grounds for those whose only concern is to save money. In an attempt to forestall that, the city government is offering rewards to residents who report violators to the police. But even if the streets of Taipei stay clean, the authorities have already uncovered several instances of garbage being trucked "across state lines" to adjacent Taipei County, where the old collection and payment systems are still in force.
But for the moment, these fears remain largely unrealized. "I am very proud of and impressed with the way the public has taken to the new plan," Shen says. "Most people here have shown themselves willing to go that extra mile for a cleaner environment." Councilors Li Ching-yuan and Lo Tsung-sheng also praise their constituents, adding that residents now have a better understanding of the importance of a cleaner future.
The new garbage collection system is not perfect, and there will always be murmurs of dissatisfaction. "But this is only the start of a great wave of social change that will one day create an environmentally friendly lifestyle," Shen says optimis tically. The combined goal of less trash and more recycling requires a change of government policy, but it also needs a substantial revision of mindsets if it is to work properly. Taipei's environment supremo hopes people will in the future take the time to think before they throw something away, because the scheme's success ultimately depends on whether the public is willing to cooperate. If it is, Taipei's new garbage program will surely become an example for all of Taiwan. Today, the city--tomorrow, the island.