Recycle, Reduce, Reuse and Close the Loop!

Here in Taiwan, they have the best trash and recycle policies. Everywhere you go they have multiple trash bins with pictures of what to put in what bin. I know in the States, recycling is tried at certain places, but here, recycling is everywhere. There is no excuse for not recycling, because every park, street, business and restaurant has the correct number of bins.

At McDonald’s, there are three trash bins with pictures on them. One is for food, one has pictures of food wrappers, and one has pictures of bags. (Oh, by the by, the McDonald's here is three stories tall!)

In our kitchen, we have six trash bins (one for trash (wrappers, tissues, etc.), one for clean paper, one for paper and plastic that has touched food, one for Styrofoam and one for metal and glass), one little place for batteries, and a big plastic bag to put… plastic bags in. We have them all labeled for what goes in what bin, because it can get pretty confusing. (What do you do when you have a plastic cup holding juice with a wrapper on the top?! This is when the labels come in handy. The plastic cup goes in the dirty paper and plastic bin, while the sealed wrapper top goes in the trash.) Now here’s the best part. The garbage truck drives down the street very slowly, but never stopping. All along, it plays a nice little tune, akin to the ice cream man the little kids know and love in the States.

(Just imagine me, the second day I'm here, in a little meeting for my new job in a new country. We are all experiencing jet lag, culture shock ("Why are all the signs in Chinese?") and the realization we are going to have 18 roommates... When suddenly we all hear the faint sounds of cute little midi music coming from outside. "The Ice Cream Man!," we all shout, little tears of joy glistening in our eyes as we realize, barring the language barrier, we are all the same at heart. "No, that's the garbage truck," the secretaries say as they run past our room to give the garbage men the bags of trash from Berhan. That's the moment I asked myself, "Where exactly am I?")

The reason the bins are labeled, is everyone has to give the trash bags to the garbage men. The garbage truck doesn’t just pick up the trash bags; someone has to give them to the garbage men. The teachers don't actually do it; the secretaries do it. I did it once during training, and let me just say it was a thrill. You wouldn't think so, because the trash trucks smell like, well trash, but you have to haul the bags up on the truck, while the trash man opens it up and looks through it assessing its contents. Meanwhile, the trash men are spotting trash in the wrong bag, so the secretaries are haggling with them. It was good times. We've only had our trash bags rejected twice, but I wish I could have seen that scene. Then the garbage men open the bags and if they aren’t done correctly (metal in the plastics bag for instance) they will reject them! That's right; the trash men can reject bags of trash. Now remember that the garbage truck never stops in front of houses or businesses. This is all happening at a slight running pace. All these recycling and trash rules make it difficult to throw something out; however, I totally think the whole world should adopt this way of recycling, especially islands. I mean if trash men had the power to reject bags of trash then just think what the world would be like! I was so surprised there was no recycling plan set in place in Hawaii. There was a little recycling place in Maui, but there weren’t any adverts for it. Don’t even get me started on St. Thomas. Any trash program there would be nice. There was trash everywhere. The entire island smelled like trash… But that's another story for another time.