The Taichung Environmental Protection Bureau said it is considering increasing the frequency of public trash collections in Taiping District (太平) after Taichung City Councilor Chang Yu-yen (張玉嬿) on Sunday criticized the current schedule as being inconvenient.
Taiping District has a population of more than 190,000, the fourth-highest of any district in Taichung, Chang said.
Since much of the population is made up of white-collar workers, it is inconvenient that the city only provides a curbside trash pickup five times a week, in the mornings, she said.
Photo: Huang Chung-shan, Taipei Times
Otherwise, residents must take their trash to garbage trucks stationed at one of eight collection points on Tuesdays and Saturdays at 8pm, she said.
It is “no wonder” that there have been so many cases of illegal dumping, she said.
A Taiping resident surnamed Lin (林) told Chang that because everyone in the family works during the day, they are unable to dispose of their trash when the garbage truck visits in the morning.
Instead, they must take their trash to a collection point 500m from their house, Lin said, adding that because the trucks leave at 8pm, they are often racing against time.
Even then, the schedule means they are only disposing of their food waste once every three days, Lin said.
There is not enough space in the refrigerator to store food waste, but the bins distributed by the city do not prevent odors, Lin said, and the only other alternative is to drop off the trash in another district on their way to work in the morning.
Trash is collected at the curbside 10 times a week — in the mornings and evenings — in North District (北區), where the family used to live, on top of pickups at collection points, Lin said.
Taiping’s residents are being treated like “second-class citizens,” Chang said.
There is clearly demand for additional garbage collection services in Taiping, she said.
She urged the bureau to hire more garbage collectors, set up additional collection points and to increase the frequency of evening services from twice to five times a week.
The current schedule is based on past demand, living habits, geographical conditions and other factors, the bureau said.
In light of the rapid development Taiping district has experienced over the past few years, it would be reassessing the frequency and availability of evening garbage services in the district, it added.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not