Here in Taiwan, around three times a week the local council sends around two trucks. One is a general garbage truck and one is for collecting recycling.

Accompanying these two trucks is an all to familiar ice cream tune they blast out of onboard speaker systems. A sound that, if you stay in Taiwan for more then a month, becomes forever associated with garbage collection.

So important is this garbage collection that it really doesn’t matter what you’re doing. You could be reading a book, watching a movie, in the shower or whatever, it really doesn’t matter. When the garbage truck melody pierces through your windows you stop what you’re doing and weigh up whether or not you need to take out the trash.

‘Oh that feels so good… keep going, harder… harder… HAR-…’

‘…’

‘…HEY. Why did you stop?!?!’

‘Ssh! The music… I’m trying to think whether I took the trash out last time or not.’

‘that’s what you think about during sex?!?’

‘…it’s the music. I…I can’t help it.’

‘we’re done here, don’t call me.’

For all the rabid garbage collection diligence the inhabitants of Taiwan foster though, there still exists somewhat of a dilemma with respect to recycling.

Sure, recycling facilities are available and abundant in Taiwan but instead of solving any waste problems, recycling here feels more like applying a bandaid to a gushing axe wound.

If you’ve ever walked into an Asian grocery store in the west and been appalled at the amount of packaging everything has, the bad news is that this isn’t some sort of food export policy. Here in Asia the packaging waste is infinitely worse.

Virtually everything comes with copious amounts of plastic packaging. Lollies come individually packaged, packed in an even larger bag. Two minute noodles bowls are made out of foam and contain 3-4 plastic sachets each.

Night markets are huge offenders with nearly every foodstuff that you buy being served up in a plastic bag. Some cafes are no better either, serving food on plates covered with a plastic bag; the idea being that it’s cheaper to just throw out the plastic bag rather than hiring someone to wash dishes.

Coming from a culture on the verge of outlawing plastic bag use altogether, it really is a shock to the system experiencing Taiwan’s blatant addiction to the things. Every shop, from the milk tea stalls to the supermarkets, to the little eateries that exist everywhere are all to willing to place your tiny consumable into a plastic bag and hand it to you before you’ve even had a chance to protest.

As far as drinks and food goes the culture seems to have something to do with everyone being on the run all the time. Drinks and food are pegged up on scooter hooks to be eaten later as people fly about their daily business.

Day to day I decide to start saving my plastic bags at work and after a few months of saving my 5 day a week lunch bags, along with some dinner bags this is what my drawer looked like.

That’s the bottom draw that’s about 40cm deep and about 60cm long absolutely stuffed full of plastic bags. Multiply this by twenty something million people and you really get a sense of banning plastic bags back home being nothing more then a token gesture.

If you really want to avoid a sense of environmental hopelessness, try not to think about how much plastic Taiwan’s neighbour China uses daily. I’m sure the rampant plastic bag culture is no different there.

Another area of waste is chopsticks. Knives and forks for the most part don’t exist here and given that it’s cheaper to eat out than to cook at home, 99.9% of the time you’re eating at a place that’ll hand you over disposable wooden chopsticks.

Where the wood for these chopsticks comes from I have no idea. At three meals a day that’s 6 chopsticks alone for me personally, let alone the millions of other people that use a few pairs a day and then have no other option but to throw them out.

Again, try not to think of China’s billion plus population burning through god knows how many millions or even billions of disposable wooden chopsticks daily.

Somewhere out there are forests must be getting ripped apart in the name of culinary convenience.

As I said earlier while the recycling facilities do exist, one would think it’d be more productive to curb the extraordinarily high levels of waste per capita that are produced here. From packaging to dining habits to general day to day consumables.

Yet the Taiwanese on the whole appear to be largely indifferent to it.

The other day my boss walked in with a wooden box. Inside was her lunch.

‘You’re kidding… they’re serving lunch in freaking wooden boxes now?’

‘Yah.’

‘What do you do when you’re finished, take it back?’

‘No. Just throw out.’

‘Wait you throw out a wooden box? There’s a cafe out there serving food in wooden boxes that people just throw away?!’

‘Yah. Is normal in Taiwan.’

I try not to act all culturally superior here but sometimes it’s really hard.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Scattered across the island are copious amounts of solar powered road lights offsetting the drain on Taiwan’s electricity grid. A brilliant public transport system also helps to reduce energy consumption by the nation.

One scheme in particular that I was very pleased to see was the adoption of wind power. Scattered along the coast are giant wind turbines, presumably used to help with the local power grids. To give you an idea of just how massive these things are, yes those are full sized street lights in the photo.

They’re quite large and impressive to stand near, you really get a sense of the power needed to turn the blades as they whoosh past. One thing I’m appreciative of is the acceptance of functionality over aesthetic. Good luck trying to get these things erected back home.

‘Oh but they ruin our coastline views!’

There’s also the brilliant use of rooftop space to store hot water tanks so as to make the most out of the suns heat to keep water warm.

For the most part I guess I should be happy that it isn’t a lot worse in Taiwan. Evidently steps are being made to try and integrate with the environment as evidenced with solar and wind power facilities.

Still, as a whole I think there’s a hell of a long way to go before actual residents start to give a damn about the environmental impact they and the products they use are having. Until that’s addressed and consumer demand shifts from acceptance to more environmentally friendly options, I think nothing much is going to change.

Meanwhile I’ll continue to feel like I’m putting in the tokenest of efforts as I run down the stairs to drop my one bag of recycling off each week.



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