That Time Beethoven Made Sustainable Trash Disposal A Thing
Deep insights into human behavior helped Taiwan go from ‘Garbage Island’ to recycling poster child.
It may not look like it, but a canary yellow garbage truck blaring classical music as it ambles down crowded neighborhood lanes embodies a runaway success story — that of Taiwan’s garbage disposal system. It tells of how tech can help inspire sustainable behavior, but only as part of a broad strategy driven by visionary leadership; how pulling the right motivational levers can turn trash disposal into fun for the whole family. (Yes, actual fun.)
Five nights a week, metallic strains of Beethoven’s Für Elise (sometimes it’s Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska’s A Maiden’s Prayer) alert citizens in certain Taiwanese cities to gather out on the streets to dump their trash. The routine is surprisingly social; witnesses have called it one of Taiwan’s “liveliest communal rites”.
A yellow garbage truck pulls up to the curb, followed by a smaller white one for recyclables. Neighbors break up their chatter to throw various bags of refuse into the correct containers. Hawk-eyed workers enforce stringent sorting rules for glass, paper, cardboard, cans, plastic and various types of food waste.
This orderly, ‘trash doesn’t touch the ground’ system is a far cry from past practice. Before singing trucks were introduced in the late 1990s, Taiwan’s trash-strewn, vermin-ridden streets had earned it the nickname ‘Garbage Island’. Growing recognition of Taiwan’s rapidly depleting landfill space, worsening air pollution and desire to attract more tourists finally led the island nation to dramatically up its recycling game.
The numbers bear out their efforts. Between 1998 to 2015, Taiwan went from recycling 5.9% of its waste to 55.0%. (It’s around 35.0% in the United States). Daily waste disposal decreased from 1.143 kilos per person to 0.378 kilos. (In the U.S, recent estimates put that number at around 2 to 3 kilos.)
Several elements combined to produce such an impressive turn-around: bold top-down directives, nuanced understanding of human behavior and a strong appetite for technology’s potential to address complex social problems.
Bold top-down directives
Policies implemented in the 1990s by the Taiwanese government turned responsible trash disposal into a daily civic duty, defying conventional wisdom that says economic growth inevitably results in increased consumption and therefore increased waste.
Among these policies was the ‘4-in-1’ program that established the Recycling Management Fund. Under the program, companies are taxed for the amount of waste they produce, the proceeds of which fund innovative recycling initiatives and have sparked a lucrative recycling industry now bringing in billions of dollars (more on this later).
Taiwan’s shift towards sustainable waste management also reflects the bigger environmental ambitions of its leaders, including reducing intensive energy use by at least 50% by 2025 compared to 2005 levels.
Nuanced understanding of human behavior
“To make the policy work, you have to make it convenient for people. You need incentives and you need penalties,” said Wu Sheng Chung, director-general of the Taiwan Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) waste management department.
Classic extrinsic motivation — encouraging recycling through external rewards and punishments — is at work in Taiwan, with citizens required to purchase blue government-approved plastic bags for all non-recyclable waste. The bags range in size and price, with a pack of twenty 25 litre bags going for about US$5. Those who dump their trash in non-sanctioned bags face fines of up to NT$6,000 (US$184). Upon multiple infringements, they risk being publicly shamed. Taiwan is also one of the few countries in the world where you can earn a decent income supplement by becoming a litterbug informant.
This kind of pay-as-you-go trash disposal system, plus the conspicuous absence of trash bins in public spaces, aims to make people directly responsible for his or her own personal consumption.
Still, it’s not all about reward and punishment. Just ask these kids, who excitedly anticipate the daily sorting of trash and musical truck visits. They’re part and product of an education system that teaches sustainability and environmental responsibility from kindergarten through to high school. Former minister of Taiwan’s EPA, Dr. Eugene Chien, laid down the behavioral reasoning behind this push for early environmental education: “If you tell the adults that they must separate the garbage, they get mad with you… But if I teach their son or their daughter, then the parent will say, ‘Why is my child so smart?’ and they will do it.”
Strong appetite for solution-based technology
Sealing the deal for Taiwan’s strong trash disposal system is the country-wide embrace of technology’s potential to make recycling convenient and profitable. In Taipei, people have savvy mobile apps to track the more than 4,000 trash pickup spots around the city and pinpoint exactly when and where yellow trucks will stop.
Innovative use of technology has additionally carved out a sizeable export market for green products, which make up around 15% of Taiwan’s exports and is forecast to be worth $318 billion by 2020. The country is a veritable incubator of imaginative uses for waste. One Taipei-based startup makes everything from boats to buildings out of waste materials collected from within Taiwan. There’s also companies converting plastic into cost-efficient fuel and fashioning violins out of leftover glass from smartphones.
Taiwan’s success on the sustainability front is the outcome of a favorable amalgamation of committed leadership, the foresight to investigate people’s motivations and a sky-is-the-limit approach towards using technology to solve complex problems.
However, even those at the forefront see room for improvement: The island’s health minister recently suggested replacing Für Elise with modern pop hits to “inspire more young people to meet and hang out with one another at the local trash pickup stations”.
They may be onto something.
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