Compared with the past, Taiwan has changed quite a lot in terms of culture and technology, and policies have also been improved a lot with time. “Policies” not only change people’s living habits, but also bring us the improvement of the environment. These changes are very noticeable in the cleaning crew’s eyes.

New Taipei City was upgraded to a direct-controlled municipality in 2010. Luzhou City Cleaning Squad was controlled by the Luzhou City Office before the upgrading. At that time, the garbage collection system was not perfect and the environment was messy. However, after New Taipei City was upgraded, the Cleaning Squad went under the management of New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department and the system has undergone a drastic change.

Keep Trash Off the Ground

Among the environmental policies, “Keep Trash Off the Ground” has the greatest impact on the city appearance. This policy is first implemented in Taipei City and it includes three major items: garbage classification, resource recovery and garbage collection. Due to its remarkable results, the New Taipei City Environmental Protection Department has also started to implement this policy for the improvement of the city appearance.

Before this policy is implemented, we can see piles of rubbish everywhere on the streets, what we call messy spots. These piles of rubbish hills on the roadside will be smelly and attract flocks of mosquitoes and flies. Some cats and dogs find something to eat inside them, so that the rubbish is scattered on the ground. At this time, cleaning crews always must endure these, and silently clean it to maintain our city appearance.

After the implementation of this policy, our garbage trucks will travel along the fixed route and collect rubbish from every household. People classify rubbish and resources at home first, and then they can throw the rubbish directly into garbage trucks and resource recovery trucks when they arrive at the stops near their homes at the time of collection. This method of collection can not only facilitate the classification and sorting by cleaning crews, but also facilitate the public to throw garbage because the collection time is fixed, and the city will slowly become clean and tidy.

http://recycle.epb.taichung.gov.tw/
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Per Bag Trash Collection Fee

The waste of resources is a big problem for the cleaning crew. Most of the reusable resources are discarded as trash, and each of them hopes people can do a good job on the classification of rubbish and recyclables. Therefore, the idea of ​​Per Bag Trash Collection Fee comes into being.

 “People need to use the special trash bag to throw rubbish into the garbage truck. If such special trash bags are bought with money. Then whether people will still put recyclables into the garbage bag?”

As expected, the public actively classify resources after this idea is tried out.

New Taipei City has been implementing the Per Bag Trash Collection Fee in Shen Bagong, Yingge, Bali, Yunghe and Tucheng as an experiment since 2008. It achieves excellent results, with the amount of rubbish has markedly reduced by 50%, and the recovery amount of resource and kitchen waste has increased by nearly 40%. New Taipei City fully implemented it in 2010 because of its proven results, and it has reduced the daily rubbish amount by nearly 70%. Of course, the effectiveness of resource recovery also increases a lot.

During our interviews, we knew that cleaning crew was quite satisfied with the policies of “Keep Trash Off the Ground” and “Per Bag Trash Collection Fee” because they repeatedly mentioned the benefits of both policies and they showed a very bright smile.