Ice Cream Trucks versus Trash Trucks in Taiwan

While sitting at dinner in a small street cafe, I heard mechanical music off in the distance. At first I thought it was the ice cream truck coming and had a pavlovian reaction. My mouth started watering and I started craving ice cream. I was curious to see what kind of ice cream locals ate, so I walked outside the restaurant with my camera in hand. I saw people on the streets running from their houses out to the street corners. Never before had I seen such strong interest from everyone in the ice cream truck. I figured it must have some amazing ice cream treats. However, I was in for a surprise. In a few minutes a orange trash truck rounded the corner with its yellow lights flashing. Coming from the truck was the music I had heard! I couldn’t help but laugh. It was just too funny. As the trash truck approached it would stop two or three times per block. What I noticed was nobody had trash cans. Instead, each person held a trash small plastic trash bag in hand (or several). Everyone ran forward giving their trash to the trash men on the back of the truck which went by. After that first time I witnessed the same event on a nightly basis.

When I ask a local about the trash truck and music, they told me it was a hot topic of debate in Taiwan. A few years earlier the government made some sweeping reforms to the trash regulations.

• No more public trash bins on streets, parks for public areas
• Trash would be collected daily by trucks
• Trash must be pre-sorted in recyclable goods, and general rubbish (trash men will refuse trash that has not been sorted properly)

To me, these rules seemed very drastic and extreme. I started looking around and indeed there were no public trash bins anywhere. Apparently the new laws were passed because of the high humidity and hot temperatures that Taiwan experiences for most of the year. When they had trash bins the trash would start going rotten very quickly causing terrible smells and therefore the system was put in place. It does seem a bit extreme, but interestingly enough, it seems to work well.