Reducing Waste and Old Taiwan｜Resource recycling is really effective? Effective promotion of subdivision is expected to become the final solution?

In today's era of improving living standards and rapid urban development, the demand for resources is gradually increasing, and at the same time, the earth's resources are scarce. Therefore, resource recycling has become an important contemporary technology. Maybe you have also suspected that all the things separated from resource recycling can be used? Why is Taiwan's recycling rate not 100%? In fact, Taiwan has a recycling rate of 61.3, which can be said to be quite eye-catching internationally. However, because some recyclers import a large amount of cheap foreign waste, many available local resources are still wasted. In fact, in addition to importing foreign waste for a long time, one of the key reasons why Taiwan is still unable to further improve its recycling rate is that the waste disposal procedures are too cumbersome.

Resource recycling in Taiwan can be roughly divided into general waste, kitchen waste, paper, plastic, metal, glass, old clothes, electrical appliances, large waste, etc. The seemingly careful classification is actually very rough. For example: glass can be divided into colored and colorless glass, the price and reuse value of different colors of glass are different (colorless can be dyed in various colors, but colored can not change color), and plastics are more complicated ; Plastics can be divided into different types such as No. 1-7 according to the material. Some plastics belong to thermosetting plastics (which cannot be reused after hardening and shaping, such as epoxy resin, melamine) and thermoplastic plastics (which can be recycled and remodeled, such as PET, PP) , PVC, PS, etc.), thermoplastics of different materials cannot be mixed and recycled. Because the process of finer classification is quite cumbersome and there is a danger of being cut by glass, most recycling plants are reluctant to do it, so this cumbersome and tiring burden falls on the original road cleaning, waste removal, clean water On the cleaning team working in the trenches, they have added glass color separation to their work items, tearing off the packaging on plastic bottles, and tearing off advertising stickers and tapes, etc., which consumes more cleaning energy.

In addition to the waste of manpower and material resources for cleaning staff, the inability to carry out effective waste sorting and control also caused a lot of financial waste, which led to the delay in Taiwan's recovery rate being unable to increase most of the time. Speaking of this, many people may have doubts, don't we all have special garbage bags, garbage disposal fees collected along with the water fee or separately? According to the statistics of the Guardian Taiwan Foundation, Taipei City has nearly 7.3 billion garbage disposal fees. , only 5% came from projects expropriated from the public, and only 10% in New Taipei City. Under Taiwan's cheap garbage collection fees, there is simply no money to hire additional manpower for sub-classification. Therefore, if the pressure of recycling and sorting is to be exerted on the cleaning team in the future, it is bound to be in the following two situations. First, increase the cost of garbage cleaning and hire more manpower to do the work; second, the workload of cleaning personnel increases, resulting in the situation that cleaning personnel are squeezed and exploited by the system, and overall, it leads to consumption and shortage of energy and energy. Therefore, returning this responsibility to the public is the real solution to the insufficient recycling rate. Simple sub-categories for everyone can take the pressure off cleaning the system. I believe that it is easier for the whole people to sort their own small amount of garbage than to apply all the garbage of the whole people to the cleaning staff for recycling?

To put it simply, sub-classification is to divide garbage into more than 20 categories, including plastics, newspapers and books, cartons, paper containers, styrofoam, CDs, clean plastic bags, miscellaneous plastics, ferrous metals classified according to No. 1-7. , aluminum metal, other metal products, batteries, lamps, electrical appliances, transparent glass, green glass, brown glass, umbrellas, helmets, old clothes, large waste, etc. The complete and complete classification of these items can truly solve the recycling rate in Taiwan. But wouldn't it be a problem for cleaning crews to carry them into so many categories? Not really. While Taiwan's implementation of sub-classification, it can learn from countries with high recycling rates such as Japan and Sweden. For example, referring to Japan's mining and recycling, different recycled materials are carried on different days, and the recycled materials are not easily mixed together, and it can also reduce the secondary pollution caused by daily transportation and recycling. We can also refer to Sweden’s practice, set up recycling stations widely, and encourage people to recycle by giving points back; maybe we can’t use automated vacuum pipes to remove garbage like Sweden, but we can learn from setting up recycling stations, except In addition to reducing the number of stops for resource recycling vehicles and reducing secondary pollution, it also allows people to take out garbage 24/7 without having to drive garbage trucks. Most importantly, complete and effective classification can be carried out to maximize the benefits of recycling. change.

In fact, the recycling station, which sounds unfamiliar and distant, has already learned from the past in Taiwan. Just last year, thanks to the efforts of the Guardian Taiwan Foundation and local residents, recycling stations were set up in Jingmei, Taipei City, and Donghai State House in Taitung County, raising the recycling rate to over 70%, which has a very significant effect. The outstanding results have also been affirmed by the residents. As long as you are willing to take the first step, sub-classification will not be difficult. I believe that with the promotion of many environmental protection groups, the era of sub-classification is coming, and Taiwan is also expected to return to the throne of the recycling empire.

Finally, let’s share the steps with friends who want to set up a recycling station! In addition to consulting with the local government and the Environmental Protection Bureau, you can also contact the Caretaker Taiwan Foundation through the following website for experience and information on setting up recycling stations. Consult. Taiwan's future depends on your recycling and sorting, resource reuse and waste regulation, in order to achieve the goal of sustainable development.