TAIPEI — Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou has decided to stake his political future on the city’s trash.

Going against the advice of his aides, he pushed through a new garbage-collection scheme on July 1, even though there were dire warnings that making people pay extra for garbage disposal would cost him re-election.

Since its implementation, the scheme has drawn the expected hue and cry and a rash of law-breaking.

But, Mr Ma wants to show that he did not owe his election to his movie-star looks and that he could pull off something which stymied even his dynamic predecessor, Presi~lcnt Chen Shuihian.

As Mayor of Taipei from 1994 to 1998, Mr Chen started a clean-up campaign tinder the slogan "laji bu luodi"— "no rubbish should reach the ground" — which required residents to take their garbage out at designated times of the day when the collection truck came round.

Drawing criticism at first, it gained acceptance slowly, mainly because ‘l’aipei became cleaner.

However, his other scheme — to levy a charge on garbage disposal, based on volume — failed. Under the scheme, residents would pay a fee for regulation garbage bags, the price of which included the collection fee.

Implemented in a few boroughs over a period of three months, it proved highly unpopular and was dropped.

The present scheme, passed by the city council about a year ago, is a modification of the earlier one.

There will still be the regulation trash bags, in various sizes, the prices of which will take in the cost of garbage disposal.

But to encourage recycling, residents will be allowed to use non-regulation bags, such as old shopping bags, to hold their recyclable trash, which has been separated under categories such as paper, glass and plastics.

So, the more effort put into separate recyclable rubbish, the less one would pay for garbage disposal. Also, the less garbage generated, the less one would pay.

In other words, the new scheme aims to reduce the volume of waste, while at the same time increasing recycling. In the past, garbage-collection fees were simply pegged to water consumption and added to water bills.

So that Taipei’s 870,000 households and 230,000 industrial and commercial units are clear about the fairly complicated scheme and to answer their many questions, the city embarked on a publicity campaign costing NT$10 million (S$560,000) three months before implementation.

Among the most asked questions are: On what day does the recycling truck come? Why are the bags so expensive? Is it not wasteful to use special bags when I have so many reusable ones?

City government employees and volunteers fanned out through the city to dis.’ tribute brochures on the new scheme and to give out free packs of the green-and-white regulation garbage bags.

Popular rapper Pu Hsueh-liang, better known as Ah Liang, was roped in to explain the scheme to residents in TV and radio ads.

The Mayor seemed always to have a garbage bag in his jacket pocket, which he would whip out at every opportunity, including at public functions with Mr Chen and Kuornintang chairman Lien Chan.

He even braved the rain to speak to residents personally at garbage-collection points in the evenings.

On the big day itself, confusion reigned at many collection points, with about one-third of residents not using the regulation bags for their rubbish.

In the Fu-an borough, residents refused to comply with the ruling, wanting the city government first to address long-standing issues such as flooding during rainy seasons.

Then there was the problem of illegal dumping.

To prevent wily folk from throwing their bags of garbage into city bins, the government changed all the bins to ones with tiny openings.

Undeterred, some residents hurled bags of rubbish into school compounds or deposited them in public toilets and at MRT stations.

To counter this rash of law-breaking, the police were called in, with one police station sending some trash bags to the identification division for finger-print identification.

By July 7, 256 people had been caught for illegal dumping and fined NT$4,500 each, "almost equivalent to three years’ garbage fees for an average three-member family", said the chief of the city’s environment-protection bureau, Mr Stephen Shen.

Not surprisingly, there were many gripes.

Mr Pat Wong, 30, a mechanical engineer, said the categorisation of recyclable waste — seven categories altogether — was too detailed and inconvenient and suggested that the city government do the separation of such waste, with residents needing only to separate it from non-recyclable waste.

For magazine editor Steven Yu, 32, the big problem is the lack of space in his small flat, which he shares with his wife and baby daughter.

"I’ve got two or three piles of recyclable trash at home now," he said unhappily.

He said his garbage fee would go up unless he accumulated non-recyclable trash instead of throwing it out daily.

"My garbagebill previously was NT$108 per month. If I throw garbage out daily, using the 14-litre bag, which cost NT$210 for 30 bags, my bill will almost double. I try my best now to throw out garbage once every two days, to keep my bill under NT$100.

"But in summer, food rots quickly and it is unhygienic to keep food waste too long"

-By Goh Sui Noi

Source : The Straits Times, Jul 28, 2000

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