The Issue of Garbage

The garbage system in Taiwan has been a great puzzlement to me.

I’ve had no choice but to consider garbage very carefully because it has been accumulating in my room for four weeks. I don’t know what to do with it: I haven’t figured out how to get it off my hands. I have three tidy grocery bags full of trash awaiting disposal beside my front door. But dumpster there isn’t, public trashcan there is not, and dispersal by balcony-tossing is simply not a resort I’m willing to accept.

What does one do? I’ve considered sneaking my trash out of my room one piece at a time and casually depositing it in public trashcans, but even those are hard to come by, and such a method would take weeks, at best. Even the 7-Elevens, which seem to grace every third street corner, rarely offer a receptacle.

Some people keep a collection of their personal trash for a period of time as an exercise in waste-awareness. The extremists in this lot will even carry around all of the trash they accumulate during a certain period of time, perhaps a month, so that they are sure they fully understand how much waste is passing through their hands. Also, the people around these practitioners are subjected to the dirty evidence of wastefulness, even if they’d rather ignore such truths. This is a great exercise and I admire those who pay attention to their trash volume: kudos.

I, however, did not intentionally begin saving up my garbage – it’s just been the by-product of my living in an apartment building for the first time in my life compounded with the fact that I can’t speak or read Chinese. I don’t want all of this trash: I just can’t get rid of it. Information about trash collection is indubitably posted somewhere in the building, but, written in Mandarin, it’s of little use to me.

It is true that I could have asked a co-tenant about the proper garbage disposal procedure (and I eventually did), but until the problem began to infringe upon my delicate psyche, I was too shy to broach the subject with anybody I saw wandering in or out of my apartment building. I rarely see other people in my building at all, and I was concerned about initiating a relationship based on garbage. What if this person didn’t speak English? Would I have to imitate a garbage truck? Make garbage truck noises and sing the garbage truck song?* Show him my trash collection? How mortifying!

So I held onto my garbage and decided to conduct my own research. I began collecting clues, compiling observations, assembling evidence, and otherwise scrutinizing the mystifying and, in my mind, inaccessibly complex garbage-disposal system.

*The garbage truck song: Taiwanese garbage trucks blast a very distinctive tune that sounds very much like an American ice cream truck. But don’t get your hopes up: although the streets are packed with garbage trucks, ice cream is almost impossible to find.

Observations Gathered:

1. People will take your refuse and sell it.
When leaving Joe's apartment one evening, he asked me to carry some cardboard down to leave next to the small garbage can in front of his building (why doesn’t my apartment building have a trash can?).
"Just sit it there?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "you know those people riding around on bicycles loaded with huge trash bags? One of them will take it."
"They’ll just pick it up for you? Why? They don’t look like they work for anybody. Do they get paid?”
"I think they sell it," he said.

2. Joe might be right. Several blocks from my apartment building is a refuse sorting area. It's kind of like an empty lot between buildings, but it has a concrete floor and a roof and is filled with mountains of trash. Whenever I pass during daylight hours, the place is bustling with activity. Men and women come in and out on bicycles and scooters with dollies or carts welded behind. Most of these little vehicles are carrying such towering loads of bottles, cans, cardboard, and other recyclables (on the handlebars and rear rack in the absence of a cart), that they’re about the height, width, and length of Indian elephants. I suspect that these private garbage gleaners might, in fact, be selling their recyclables to the sorters, who probably act as middlemen and resell the sorted sundries to larger recycling operations.

3. Trash cans are hard to come by in Chiayi. I pass about twice as many recycling receptacles than trashcans, but even those are scarce. Thus, I carry most of my trash home with me. I can't just easily chuck it and forget all about it as I can at home.

4. Garbage trucks will accept your trash but will not pick it up. I came to this conclusion after observing a garbage truck at close range. On this particular day, a trash truck and I passed each other in opposing directions. As the trash truck trundled slowly down the street singing its song, shop owners rushed out to throw garbage bags into the back of the truck. No garbage man. No assistance that I could make out. Just shop owners throwing their trash into a truck that could have been remote controlled or following magnetic strips beneath the pavement. The loud song, then, alerted people that the truck was coming. The slow pace gave them time to collect and present their trash.

5. Amendment: Garbage trucks will pick up your trash. Yesterday, while sitting at my desk, I heard a garbage truck approaching. I ran out to the balcony and saw a truck creeping down the alley. This truck had two garbage men and they were picking up bags of trash that had been laid out on the curb. No residents were in sight; only garbage men and the garbage truck. So garbage collectors do exist.

What to do with this information?

Four weeks of frustration and mystery.

Today I heard a truck coming and FLEW out onto the balcony. I really needed to get rid of some trash. The truck was, again, going down the alley, but already it was out of range. I had begun keeping a log of local visits from garbage trucks in an attempt to identify some sort of schedule or pattern, so I added my observations and the time of day.

And then I was blessed -- a fellow down the hall came out of his room and leaned his head out of a window, apparently looking for the garbage truck. I approached.

"Excuse me... do you speak English?" He looked a little startled and nervous.
"Only very little... not well."
"I don’t know what to do with my trash," I confessed. He looked confused. A second fellow came out into the hall and they spoke in Mandarin.
"Is that our garbage truck?" I tried, pointing to the alley.
"No no no," they said, “not ours.”
"What do I do with my trash? Do we have a trash truck, too?"
"Eight o’clock pm," the first fellow said, writing it on his palm with his finger.
"In front or in back?" I asked, gesturing toward the front of the building.
"In front," they told me, nodding, “eight… eight…” They switched to Mandarin and told me the truck would come at eight thirty, which, thankfully, I understood.

"Do I stand there and throw it in the truck when it passes by, or do I just leave my trash on the curb?" I wanted to be prepared, but this question was too complicated, and they shook their heads and shrugged apologetically. I moved on to a new question.
"Does the truck come every night?" They counted days on their fingers and held up various fingers to indicate days of the week, but I didn’t understand.
"One, two, five… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...” they told me. “One, two three, four... Six days, six days, eight thirty!"
"Okay," I say, "thanks. Thank you very much." I gave them a big smile and went back to my garbage-laden room, slightly confused but enormously relieved.

Thank goodness -- I would finally be able to free myself of my garbage – I had a date with the garbage truck.