No, wrong. So wrong. As I’m sure you can already see, it’s far easier to just leave your trash on the street than to take a trip to the city-ordained liquor stores to buy the approved bags. And with the bags being tiny and flimsy you don’t have much of an option for anything larger to get tossed. Got a big pillow? A dirty paint bucket? A 2x4? Just leave that anywhere. It was honestly one of the dirtiest places I’ve ever lived.
The difference is, if you leave garbage without the right bag/on the street your neighbours are going to dump it back on your front door.
Larger item dumping is still a problem though. Some places issues coupons for a certain number of trips to the dump/year for local residents that can help.
It's an important part of local culture cause all the old people like hanging out and hyucking it up together but I've got a TODO item to map public vehicle / pedestrian collision data against local trash pickup times to see how often scooters or cars are taking out the elderly that are walking into a second lane of traffic because the sidewalk is packed with people holding trash bags and the first lane is taken up by a trash truck. Bonus points if the second lane also had a slow moving trash motorcycle (some kind of separate private trash pickup entity I don't yet understand) that decided to simply park adjacent to the trash truck and directly in traffic.
Anyway plus side yeah in Taipei there isn't a rat problem like new york, so I guess in some ways it kinda works, definitely not ideal imo though. I don't think trash bins would work either here though, the alleys are too small, the road system too... improvised.
It's a natural consequence of American individualism.
It states that witnesses reported him putting the box of his new LG tv, in with the paper rubbish.
It then states that a subsequent investigation proved, that it was indeed his LG cardboard box, with, o horror, the styrofoam packaging still inside! Don't laugh, it's a crime.
It concludes by politely offering a close to a 1000 CHF fine, lest he'd like to discuss the matter in front of a judge.
1. The cost of the trash bags relative to median income in some neighborhoods was too high. When a 5 pack of bags is $9 and you earn $7.25/hour before taxes, it is suddenly not that easy to justify doing the right thing when the free thing is possible.
2. People lived in apartment buildings and multi family homes so there is no easy identification of who exactly leaves a car battery or a mattress on the sidewalk at 3am. Having cops watch all the streets all the time for this wouldn’t work and neighbors don’t want to bother watching each other.
3. Because people didn’t earn that much relative to cost of living, high fines would just throw poor people in jail while those who can afford the bags can just buy the bags. So you’d still have trash on the streets but also cause people who can least afford it to lose their jobs by making them miss work.
4. Minor point but where you buy the bags matters. It was highly inconvenient that you couldn’t buy them at grocery stores. Instead you had to literally go out of your way to go to sketchy convenience stores and liquor stores instead.
Plenty of people used the bags but there were enough who didn’t that it made the city dirty. And once you get used to seeing trash on the street you are a lot less likely to think twice about contributing to it yourself.
The answer is, as you have, severe enforcement or provision of an affordable alternative.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2022/08/16/residen...
I have the most amazing garbage collection. No litter, no dumping, the trash is picked up and taken care of.
Which is why salvaging is discouraged.
Here, in Portugal, you can dump up to certain weight for free but you end up paying 30-40 Euros for a full van, for example. As a result people just dump garbage anywhere out of sight, specially rubble and other construction garbage. I find it shortsighted as the council then spends a lot of money cleaning up those places.
Much easier to drive to a remote location when it's dark and dump it with 99% chance of getting away with it.
The bucketed glass, boxed paper, and plastic in a sack (one hundred each of which cost nothing ie €0.00, we just sign for them at the town hall, or - rather conveniently - a local bar) having been put out on a Monday evening are gone by 0800. These removals all cost about €180pa.
The larger bi-weekly bins are generally emptied by 1000, and we are billed by weight. As a single resident i get a hell of a discount on the total year, but i have to use the bin min 4 times a year. I often end up borrowing rubbish from my neighbours, just to keep my numbers up.
We also have a local dump for when house cleaning, much stuff, electronics, poisons etc. That's included in the $180 and can be used whenever open, as often as you like and you can stil take plastic, glass and paper there.
All i 'miss' is a large-item collection service, that may exist - I've just never asked, as I've never needed it.
When the system was introduced, about 15 years ago, people were upset that the big dumpsters were taken away and cats etc would rip open the bags, and the rubbish in the street would be unsightly.
I really don't think anyone in the whole city would go back to the dumpster ways (though there are dumpsters strategically around - several many for where tourists are (regularly emptied smaller bins are gathered together).
But I know the feeling of being unaware of such details... Renovations and furnishing produces huge amounts of cardboard trash. Took us a half year and many car trips to the local recycling company to realize that our neighbors just put their huge cardboard boxes next to their bin on pick up day! Insert Picard facepalm At least the recycler takes paper/cardboard for free, and is not too far away.
As they say, the problem with incentives is that they work.
Instead, you should tax the consumption, and pay people who dispose of trash.
I understand it is difficult to raise taxes for this if they were not there in the first place. Aluminum collection, which has some value, could subsidize part of the tax. The other could come from some tax on real estate, since waste is supposedly linked to people (I know in Germany I pay for building trash collection).
With such prime real estate, it might be a problem to find the space officially (those trash bags are somewhere outside right now). Idk, maybe rats are part of Gotham city for now.
