Worse, local environmentalists have observed that the alarming increase in per capita garbage production (roughly 5 percent per year) has been accompanied by a general public disregard for proper disposal: there is more litter than ever in the streets, national parks, and rivers and streams of Taiwan, known in the past as Formosa, the "Beautiful Island. " Environmental awareness is obviously still in its infancy.
As the following article indicates, public recognition of environmental issues is only the first step toward their resolution. Ensuring a safe environment requires commitment by the public and government alike to a long and painful process fraught with obstacles from competing interests in society.
The recent surge in the volume of garbage has been an inevitable function, and symptom, of modernization. As Taiwan developed rapidly from an agricultural to an industrial economy, events outpaced the cultivation of a broad environmental consciousness. "People are still used to old habits," explains Linda Tsai of the Beautiful Taiwan Foundation, an anti-litter organization. "Too many people just don't know how to throw things away properly."
Problems with garbage disposal took two quantum leaps in recent years. Five years ago, government health authorities promoted the use of styrofoam pien tang (lunch boxes, plates, and other accessories) and disposable wooden chopsticks in Taiwan's ubiquitous restaurants and street-side food stands. While cutting back on hepatitis dangers, there was a marked upswing in daily garbage collection loads. Then, two years ago, Taiwan opened its doors to international fast-food franchises with their practices of double and triple packaging food items, and the garbage disposal infrastructure suffered a blow from which it is still reeling. And collection is but part of the problem: styrofoam and plastic are non-biodegradable, raising serious long-term ecological problems.
A task made easier by new trash cans along the city's main streets.
While inadequate garbage disposal plagues all countries, Taiwan's condition is exacerbated by traditional practices and limited space. Nightly collection is drawn from curbside heaps of small (and often inadequate) plastic bags full of family waste materials. After being collected, there is then the serious question of where to put it in a small island that has one of the world's densest populations, living for the most part on the one-third of the land area not covered by soaring mountains. The concentration of population makes even a moderate amount of litter more of an eyesore.
Despite the exponentially growing problems, there have been recent signs of greater commitment to ensuring a cleaner, safer environment. In August 1987, the Bureau of Environmental Protection, previously a small, underfunded office, was renamed and reorganized into the Environmental Protection Administration, making it equal to a cabinet ministry. Under the guidance of EPA Administrator Dr. Chien You-hsin [see FCR, March 1988], there has been a significant increase in funding, staffing, and the number of new projects. While Chien admits that most of the EPA's attention—and money—have been spent on Taipei, Kaohsiung, and other large cities, he maintains that the EPA is above all, a national agency. At the beginning of September 1988, he points out, the EPA created twelve county-level bureaus in order to build up a stronger infrastructure and encourage efficient management.
The introduction and implementation of county and lower-level waste disposal plans is expected to require hard work and patience. Compounding this task is the reality that altering established garbage discarding practices (or the lack thereof) in the more rural areas will be difficult for local residents to accept. Many people, Chien laments, "don't care who takes care of their garbage; they just want to throw it out." At present, lip service on environmental issues is more common than action. "We may have more environmental consciousness," says Dr. Ma Wen-shung, Director of the Safety and Health Program at Union Chemical Laboratories in Hsinchu, "but we do not have environmental responsibility."
In response to this public reality, the EPA has advocated tougher anti-littering legislation, providing both a standard of conduct and a warning to potential litter-bugs. "It is important to impose social constraints," Chien says. "People don't care enough about other people; we want to exert social pressure." But as with anti-air and anti-water pollution measures, the EPA has been frequently stymied by problems of enforcement. "We do have laws, but we don't have enough prosecutors," he adds. While the gums may have only a few new teeth thus far, at least there is progress. Last year, the 152-person inspection corps of the Taipei City Environmental Protection Bureau caught and fined 15,880 litterers. Even with such success, the Bureau's Director General, Tsui Wen-kuo, believes that more manpower is needed. Due to budget constraints, he says, "we can't be expected to make a complete turnaround overnight. "
Enforcement is but one battle in the war against litter and waste disposal. The government's efforts to inform and educate the public have been less antagonistic. At the end of August 1988, the EPA launched a massive national awareness campaign about garbage disposal, using television shorts, newspaper advertisements, and information brochures. Schoolchildren were a major target, and for good reason. Richard Arnold, a history teacher at the Taipei American School in Shihlin, says that students will learn, partly through this media blitz, "that everything they drop or throw on the ground causes Taipei to look the way it looks." Although it is still early to see concrete results from the campaign, EPA administrators say they are pleased with the reaction so far, especially in the schools.
Beyond urging the public not to litter, the EPA has also been drafting plans to improve domestic waste disposal methods. While some industrialized countries like Japan and France have for years burned much of their trash in sophisticated incinerators, Taiwan has lagged behind. But within a few years, according to official estimates, Taiwan will have the technology to produce such incinerators, which should reduce the volume of solid waste and in the process make it sanitary. In Taipei itself, three incinerators (the first of which will be ready in 1990) will be placed in the Neihu, Shihlin, and Mucha districts, respectively. Steps are already being taken to facilitate collection, including assistance from volunteer organizations. The Beautiful Taiwan Foundation, for example, has donated dozens of new sidewalk garbage cans to the city. These have separate bins for flammable and non-flammable waste, and have been placed in the busiest areas of Taipei.
But for the less urban sections of the island, the expensive incinerators may not be in operation before the 21st Century. Instead, the EPA has planned numerous sanitary landfills to bury domestic waste, similar to but smaller than Futekeng. The landfills are intended to be but temporary measures: after a rigorous detoxification process, they will be covered over and converted into parking lots, playgrounds, or parks. Futekeng, for instance, will be filled to capacity in five or six years, and already there are several proposals for reusing the land.
As one step toward more public responsibility and assistance in solving disposal problems, the EPA's Chien suggests that all Taipei residents should at least begin paying a garbage collection fee. "If Taiwan is going to solve its garbage problems, people must recognize the truth that everybody must sacrifice something. We must pay some cost to solve our own problem," he says.
In hopes of soliciting more cooperation and generating more public action, the government has also looked increasingly to other sectors of society to supplement its information and education efforts. For instance, public interest groups-scorned in the 1970s by some government officials for being mere vehicles of complaint, not action—are now welcomed to offer alternative plans and suggestions.
The Beautiful Taiwan Foundation is one such group. Created in 1987 with the backing of several local soft drink companies (including Coca-Cola and Hei Song), its goal is to encourage more public assistance in the island's refuse management. Beyond its donation of 400 newly-designed garbage cans to Taipei City, the foundation has produced a TV commercial featuring nine movie stars who volunteered to demonstrate how to throwaway garbage. But as with most non-profit organizations, Beautiful Taiwan is always squeezed by monetary considerations, relying completely on private donations, and is handicapped by insufficient manpower. Despite its limited support at present, the foundation will soon sponsor a major publicity and fund-raising campaign to install more garbage cans in Taipei and other areas.
Environmental scientists are seeking better alternatives to Taiwan's garbage disposal problems.
The EPA has even welcomed help from industry, a traditional target for environmental activists. In the past, local companies have been criticized for environmental negligence, and some EPA officials have gone so far as to suggest that industries should be taxed more to help solve the nation's environmental ills. But as Union Chemical Laboratories' Ma says: "It's not that industry is so evil; it's just that 20 years ago, we had little knowledge of environmental protection." Today, she explains, all industries have begun to address the important issue of industrial waste, realizing that a clean country is everybody's business. Many companies have also spearheaded clean-up efforts and recycling projects for domestic waste, and others have been instrumental in supporting publicity campaigns on environmental issues.
Equally indispensable have been the efforts of the academic community to disseminate information and promote improvement of pollution standards. In the classroom, teachers and professors have generated greater interest in environmental issues, and in the laboratory, environmental engineers have made significant progress in developing better methods to treat waste, including safer methods to burn or bury garbage. But at the moment there is a desperate need for environmental professionals. "We simply don't have enough people," admits Hsieh Bor-yang of the Taipei Environmental Protection Bureau. The current shortage of trained professionals testifies, with painful clarity, to decades of insufficient environmental knowledge and planning.
While greater public awareness is important to environmental action, political and economic contingencies are just as crucial. Clearly, areas with more political clout could even manipulate plans or regulations at the expense of weaker districts. Political involvement of this sort can hurt environmental protection. Chien points out that national elections are scheduled for the end of 1989, and he hopes that the environment will not be a major election issue. If this happens, valuable EPA staff time will be spent on political hearings and argumentation instead of solving actual problems. The financial picture is already influenced, for in an election year imposing a garbage collection fee would be tantamount to raising taxes, which is political suicide in Taiwan as in other countries.
But clean-up efforts will always be dictated by revenue availability and local acceptance. Especially in the less populated areas, says a Taipei city government official, landfills simply may not be economically feasible, let alone incinerators. On any level, a sense of realism must accompany prospective efforts.
What also troubles environmental advocates is the possibility that people have become inured to the everyday sight of garbage. Beautiful Taiwan's Linda Tsai suspects that many people who grew up in the island's modernizing society just don't see the surrounding mounds of litter; it only seems like a part of natural progress. Professor Yu Yue-hwa of National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering suggests setting up "some small- and medium-scale incinerators" to introduce people to new disposal technology. "For example, the city government of Taipei could set up incinerator plants in Yangmingshan [a wealthy area in Taipei] to show people they need not worry about them." Even if such a plan were implemented, he admits that people could not "expect any sudden improvements."
If local citizens are somewhat non-chalant about the litter at their feet, all hope is not lost. Just as in the U.S. experience, changing public habits is possible. But there are few other environmental parallels between Taiwan and the United States. One city official points out: "As a NIC [Newly Industrialized Country], Taiwan has no experience in these matters, and very little land area as well." The EPA's Chien agrees that Taiwan's experience is different from the gradual despoilation of America: "Thirty years of economic progress are all coming down at us at once; all the leftover problems are for us. We are quite late, and are trying to make up for lost time."
No doubt the tasks to utilize advanced technology and educate the people will necessitate time and sacrifice. But Chien is "quite optimistic" about the future. "Our target date is the year 2000. By then we want to solve the city garbage problem. But we must first learn how to behave as a modern people." Yu agrees with the importance of proper behavior, but cautions: "From the academic side, we have to be more realistic." In fact, he adds, it will be at least 20 years before the garbage crisis is under control, even assuming the full cooperation of the public. But whatever the timetable, the consensus is that the country's best hopes lie in a better-educated younger generation and in those future environmental engineers who may now be in junior high school.
While the people of Taiwan are making some progress in addressing domestic waste woes, greater affluence in a modernized society does not of itself bring greater public responsibility. In the area of waste disposal, it will take persistent efforts on the part of the EPA, schools, concerned businessmen, and all other citizens before outdated habits about littering and garbage disposal can be changed.
At least at the top levels of government a certain guarded optimism has settled in. "Because we Chinese are diligent and resourceful, I think we can succeed," says one Taipei city administrator. But more than a dedication to hard work is needed. Cooperation and a sense of common purpose will be required before Taiwan will be a completely "beautiful island," with people placing a high priority on cleaning up their own backyards.