A slurry of protests, policies and payments eliminated Taiwan’s waste problems.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/01/24
By: Nate Maynard
Walking around Taipei, one seldom sees trash or even trash cans. Instead you might
Photo Credit：shih-chen yang CC BY-SA 2.0
see people washing plastic bottles, carefully sorting computer parts and families waiting with blue trash bags for the nightly garbage trucks.
This trash transformation is a recent phenomenon. In 1993, Taiwan had a collection rate for trash of just 70 percent. That meant 30 percent of Taiwan’s waste entered the environment either through littering or burning.
Fed up with rampant illegal dumping, people demanded change, with the then Kaohsiung mayor (and now KMT chairman) Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) facing the brunt of the public’s ire. In just 20 years Taiwan transitioned from an island on the brink of a waste apocalypse to a global leader in recycling.
Today, much of Southeast Asia and the rest of the economically rising world grapples with similar trash challenges. Indonesia just invested US$1 billion into stemming the flow of plastic pollution into the ocean after being named one of the worst contributors to ocean plastic. The rest of the world fails to stem the tide – they halfheartedly use plastic bag bans, educational programs, and a mix of other programs without addressing the underlying causes. Yet, looking at Taiwan, it’s obvious what drove not only a dramatic increase in recycling but a massive decline in waste production.
[FULL STORY]
