The Yunlin County Government is implementing policies on reducing garbage. Starting September 1, 2017, all thrown-away food waste will have to be separated into raw and cooked food waste. Respective green and blue buckets will be attached to the rear end of garbage trucks to allow the separate collection of raw food waste (green bucket) and cooked food waste (blue bucket). Hopefully, through the complete recycling of all raw and cooked food materials from general trash, the government can achieve the friendly environment objective of reducing 100 tons of waste each day.

According to statistics between January and July (2017), the county government reported that the daily volume of waste collected compared to the figures from last year indicated a reduction of 26.95 tons. There is still much room for improvement in order to achieve the set goal of reducing the daily volume of waste by 100 tons. According to the sample analysis of collected garbage, the percentage of food waste accounts for over 30-percent of the county’s waste material, which makes it one of the culprits for diminishing the efficiency of the local trash-reduction initiative. The direct way to distinguish between raw and cooked food waste is to determine whether it can be fed to pigs. Those that pigs can eat are considered cooked food waste, which includes leftover from meals and other food ingredients. Meanwhile, other food waste that cannot be fed to pigs, spoiled food materials, and indiscernible items should be classified as raw food waste. Some commonly-seen raw food waste includes fruits, vegetables, gardening waste (with diameter less than 1 cm) and hard bones and shells. Also, the public is reminded that the following materials cannot be thrown into the food waste buckets: carcasses of dog, cats, and other animals; tea bags; Chinese medicine packaging; plastic bags; disposable dining utensils; wood or bamboo tooth picks; tissue papers and other items that cannot decompose.

County Magistrate Lee Chin-yung noted that trash processing is currently one of the toughest challenges for the government as there is still a large proportion of food waste in the garbage collected. Therefore, the government will impose the mandatory regulations starting September 1 of 2017, implementing the separate collection of raw and cooked food waste. The raw food waste will be used as fertilizers, while the cooked waste will be reemployed as pig feed; this is to implement waste-recycling operations to ensure sustainable use and reuse of valuable natural resources. The government calls upon the public to accurately implement trash classification to help reduce the possibility of a garbage crisis!