The link and picture kind of speak for themselves.
This past weekend was a cycling event held by Neverstop, which took participants from the geographical center of Taiwan in Puli to Wuling. As a cyclist, along with the round the island tour, this is a right of passage route.
With hundreds of participants, you are bound to make the local news. A 16 man clean up crew (also riding bikes), ascended to Wuling the next day, not to ride their personal bests, but to pick up garbage from the previous day’s event. The picture speaks for itself.
I participated in an event 3 weeks ago and 100% of the “garbage” on the street was unopened packages of food/gel, meaning these were accidentally dropped when participants were reaching for things in their jersey pockets.
This past weekend was the exact opposite. Almost all the garbage I saw on the street, was gels that were eaten. I even saw an overseas participant finish his gel and throw it over the railing. I was going to ride up and say something, but didn’t know if he spoke English or not. I decided to pass him (very fast) and drop him…I did.
How hard is it to finish what you are eating and shove the garbage in another one of your jersey pockets? Got participants thinking they are at world tour caliper participating in the Tour de France.
Let this post be a reminder to throw away your garbage in garbage cans no matter what activity you are doing!
Actually, the bottles that the pros use, to my knowledge, are biodegradable. Rumor has it that they take up to 7 years to biodegrade, but better than nothing…right?
I live in the countryside and had to put up a sign on the road leading to our house…“NO GARGAGE DUMPING”
The amount of garbage dumped on the road near our house is amazing. Last year a government department came and cleaned up the road. A year later the trash is more than last year.
If you own farm land along a small road you can expect a lot of garbage. Some farmers allow some types of weeds to grow very high and dense along their land to try to repel the garbage…which actually works as the garbage throwers prefer an easy place to toss the garbage.
Garbage in the more rural parts of small towns is a huge issue.
I am lazy to go down the five flights of stairs and around the corner to throw out my garbage in Taipei. I can’t imagine having to drive or scooter a few minutes to at specific times of day to throw away garbage.
Sometimes I miss the US with its garbage trucks collecting trash at your curb. Sometimes…
Actually in many small towns they still drive a route through the whole district including outlying areas. I don’t think it’s as you describe. They probably just don’t want to pay for it and often it’s appliances or building waste or restaurant garbage that they are chucking down the hillsides.
Where I live in the countryside you would be amazed how many small streets/roads the garbage truck goes to. They agreed to drive up near our house 3 days per week…I have to walk about 150 meters to place my trash near the road. Most people have daily pickup outside their house…even outside of the small town near us.
Last year some watermelon drink stand was dumping their watermelon rinds next to our land. Every week during the summer a big pile of new watermelon rinds. I can guess which stand as there is one about a kilometer from my house and this year was closed (no rinds near our house).
