The recycle trucks dont come and the garbage guys insist we throw the recycle into the garbage.
Obviously it wont be separated ince crushed together and will either be dumped, burned or buried somewhere. This is frustrating me, and just got into a fairly civil but heated argument with the argument that left me taking my and my neighbours recycle back into the truck and telling them I am fine to wait because I dont want it burned and causing pollution…
So, now I am wanting to collect evidence and see if people here know what are the procedures to report and make it a problem?
I am not in Taipe, probably not anywhere where other forum members live. so not looking for local hotlines, I know them here already. moreso some procedures or ideas on how to deal with government mandated dumping of clean recyclables into the trash.
What to do? It is beyond disgusting the government employees actually tell one to do this…tomorrow or the next day I will sacrifice a bag of less toxic recyclables to get a sound recording, I wasnt prepared today.
I’ve been curious for a while now how much of the “recycling” here actually gets recycled, even in Taipei. There are probably some statistics somewhere, but I couldn’t find anything too recent or too comprehensive last time I looked.
I thought most (all?) of the separately collected single-use plastic just goes straight in the incinerator. I assumed that was kind of an open secret. In any case, I’ve seen the recycling guys in my area just throw that in the back of the garbage truck more than once. And to be fair, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s impossible to recycle economically, considering it’s going to be a mixture of different plastics with varying compositions, dyes, adhesives, food residues, and all the other shit that people put in there. To be honest I haven’t bothered separating that at home for months, at least when I only have small amounts (and I do try to use less), and I just put it in the blue garbage bag to give me one less thing to carry downstairs.
I suspect a lot of paper ends up getting incinerated too, though I do separate cardboard boxes and stuff.
I’d feel guilty putting containers (PET bottles, tins, etc.) in the regular garbage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair chunk of the plastic in there ends up in the incinerator too for the same reason as above. Sorting all that must be a nightmare.
None of this really gives you what you’re looking for, but at least it bumps the thread.
From what I have heard (not specifically regarding Taiwan, but more in general), it‘s common practice to add some „recyclables“ to incinerator plants if the trash is too wet to be burned. The alternative would be adding (more) natural gas.
Most plastics can not economically be recycled - PET is one exception, but even there burning it is often cheaper than recycling (especially if the incinerator can also be used for power generation).
Plastic is simply not recycled because it isn’t economical to, even though PET can be crushed up and fed into an injection/blow molder and remolded into a new product. I suspect it’s because it’s uneconomical to do it.
Metal on the other hand is always recycled, but it’s a waste to give it to the recycling truck because you get nothing for it. If you take it to a junk yard they pay you 10nt per kg for it (this is assuming steel, aluminum and copper is worth more). Or leave your broken microwave or whatever out on the curb and someone will take it.
I wouldn’t really call it “a waste” for the average person.
For sure what you say might make sense for people working with metal or deliberately collecting scrap for recycling, but there’s no way in hell it would be worth my time (or the mess in my apartment) to collect metal and lug it to the junkyard for NT$10 per kilo. I just want it out of my apartment.
Yeah… which isn’t surprising considering what a mixture of stuff is in there. There’s a chemist guy on YouTube called NileRed who’s done a few videos illustrating a related point - turning plastic gloves into hot sauce/grape soda, cotton balls into cotton candy, aspirin into acetaminophen, and stuff like that. The point being that it might be possible to turn the wrong input into the desired end product, but you can waste a lot of resources and energy getting there.
I didn’t mind the German system either, and wouldn’t object to seeing it in Taiwan. I could never be bothered collecting the Pfand on beer bottles though - too heavy to bother carrying them back for 8 cents (or whatever it is now).
Recycling; specially when it comes to Plastics seems like a sham. I am unable to find the figures specifically for Taiwan but on a global level we seem to be producing ever more plastics and the rate of recycling seems to be declining.
In Taiwan no one seems to care - all the supermarkets/7-11s use single use plastics as if its free. People don’t seem to care - obviously government will not care if people do not. All snacks we like to eat come in single use plastics! What a nightmare if we choose to be bothered by this…
The widely circulated statistic that 9% of plastic waste is recycled in the U.S. has now been deemed an overestimate. Here are some stats that show how recycling has changed in recent years:
Of the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated in the U.S. in 2021, only 5% to 6% — or about two million tons — was recycled.
Yeah I was just going to comment to OP that recycling is a lie and we’ve known that for many years now. I’m not saying “don’t do it”, but there is such a negligible chance of your recycling load being recycled, if you care about the planet you need to consider the upstream waste instead of worrying about your carefully sorted recycling getting tossed into the garbage incinerator. Bring your own bags to the traditional market to buy your produce and eggs in bulk, don’t buy things with excessive packaging (or just don’t buy things in general), etc. are all better than taking the time to “recycle”.
They gotta go after manufacturers upstream for this.
When I worked for Walmart there’s literally mountains of plastic waste being generated, all the Christmas stuff (all of which comes from china) are individually wrapped in their own little plastic bags, which is removed before it goes on shelves. It doesn’t matter what, every Christmas ornament wrapped in layers upon layers of plastic that is thrown out long before you even buy it. I used to comment about all the plastic bag bans being largely useless, there’s already at least 10 bags per customer before they see it.
With every environmental rules, some of which are very authoritarian, just follow the money.
If they cared about the environment then we would all use ammonia refrigerant. Not only is ammonia non ozone depleting it’s also 10 to 20 percent more efficient compared to cfc and hfc. Ammonia is also vastly cheaper to procure too. Despite their downside you’re saving the ozone layer and reducing energy usage.
They also pay for some types if plastics, papers etc as well.
Although recycling in general is pretty piss friggen poor. and we the people are partly to blame for not separating and cleaning our own waste. This isnt really what I was getting at with this post.
What I am wondering is how to deal with the actual government employees and garbage trucks telling people to dump actual recyclable materials already separated into the garbage truck. at least they usually pretend and lie to us and hide the fact. but now they are literally teaching people it doesnt matter at the same time. Unacceptable, although packaging laws and recycling logistics are truly a joke, undoing the progress made.on getting people to think about the trash is a huge step backwards. enough so I am not quite annoyed and wanting to report. but i am leaning media, not official because the gov are usually a bunch of corrupt tools unable to figure the most basic of things out.
that is a big part of the problem, although not my original question on government involvement.
However, I feel people should need to be incentivized to clean their waste. frankly, it should just be common sense, or law. dont buy it if one cant clean it. this is part of the greater entitlement we see all the time, but frankly we really should be doing the work even though its a pain in the ass. once this sinks in, 2 things should happen. 1. people buy less shit they dont need. 2. companies react to complaints peoole need to spend so much time so they change their packaging production from massive waste on disposable trash to actual packages that can logically be recycled.
It is bonkers this hasnt already been for 50 years ,never mind today.
but I digress. I am only asking how to hold the government from dumping recyclables into the trash and teaching/telling my community to do so. I mean, it is pretty over the top full retard in my.opinion. especially when not 1 year ago they were yelling at everyone about what type of bag they used for their garbage. Why not just start dumping our raw sewage in the ditches?? oh wait…
get it to-fucking-gether people!!! a basic multi pronged approach is not only simple, its affordable and doable in this country. enough of the dumb ass straw like.laws and actually make a decision that works and is adhered to.
I know I bring up ac and refrigeration but it’s relevant.
We keep getting told old is bad even if the house has a perfectly good and functional r22 ac system that should be replaced because it’s bad. The government will even offer a 2000nt rebate to buy an inverter system.
So what happens to the old system? That’s trash now.
A lot of this green washing actually generates more trash.
Then you got planned obsolescence. Actually there’s a lot of planned obsolescence with inverter ac units. The circuit board is what makes it work, and there are multiple such boards. Literally a computer with refrigeration.
If the board dies due to a power surge or lightning strike the whole system is trash, especially if you can’t get replacement parts for it at all.
I dont disagree with these points you make, nor have I ever. It is part if the problem.
However, that does not make the work recycle obsolete. Just like many companies do seem to incorporate planned obsolescence, we can also very easily implement laws against such retardation. Capitalism is quite goodiin ways, however there are very clear examples of when it is a failure, this is one.
That all said, we have mostly now evolved to accept companies being total peices of shit that take advantage of us every chance they get. In very basic terms, it is one of the key components of the government to protect us from such overtly disgusting practices. And now the government is backtracking on it’s own extremes of recycling and telling everyone fuck it. Tisk tisk.
I personally feel keep the recycling program and make manufacturing more streamlined on waste and also hole consumers more accountable. with these 2 as a very basic start, recycling actually can make sense.
Had to make a trip to a city and we went into the EPA with our concerns and evidence. Asked to talk with someone higher. EPA here seem pretty on edge and too happy to help. anyway our complaint was if they are governing us (companies) and charging us loads of fees for packaging and waste materials, why are we not getting real recycling. This quite annoyed me so I cut in and was probably a bit too brash. But basically it went along the way of if we are legally forced to pay you for services you do not provide and keep causing us businesses to spend loads of money, not just on, fees but also all their extra paperwork and keeping up with their quite numerous regulations then maybe we should go to court. Because this is essentially theft, corruption and lies.
Many apologies and shocked faces. I’m giving them a week before they come down hard on the local trucks. Their first answer of " We probably need to educate them (the drivers) better" really pissed me off…! Quite disappointing. hopefully it changes. they heard my evidence, so I assume they are a bit scared of media attention. at least I hope so.
End result, they seemed authentic in their words to fix it. Hopefully they are.
There’s wanting to fix things, vs being able to fix it.
Truckers here are not really nice people, and educating them takes special people to do.
But really most the rules are literally copy pasted from other countries when some politician or lawyer heard how it worked for them, without considering the finer details or how it will work in Taiwan.
So rules here seems somewhat arbitrarily and it ends up being on government agencies to figure out how to implement a rule that isn’t going to work here at all. End result is they simply do not implement it. Just like the recycling guys will just throw everything into the incinerator anyways, because they’ve been told to “Recycle” yet are given absolutely no avenue to do so.
Not truckers per se. garbage truck drjvers/workers. they are employed by the government that literally charges every business fees for packaging basedon recycling. they also tell us to recycle, taipei folks have the strictest. All this bandwidth, money and energy to find out they just dump it. Nah, fuck that. There is a line, and that crosses it by a mile!
The lie/hypocrisy aspect being the main point.
The second guy we talked to passed us onto a higher up. He was observably a little pissed off too. his final reaction was to tell us that if it’s like this, then we dont even need to do all this recycling work. What’s the point?. his words. I was comforted by his discomfort. Hopefully it was genuine.
