In an effort to promote the city's new garbage collection initiative -- slated to go into effect in October -- Taipei City Mayor Ma Ying-jeou
Beginning May 15, the city's 435 borough wardens will start distributing to each household 10 medium-sized garbage bags plus six coupons totaling NT$330 to purchase additional bags.
All of the city's 2.64 million residents are expected to receive the bags and coupons by mid-June.
Residents are encouraged to take the coupons to the nearest supermarket or convenience store before Aug. 31 and exchange them for garbage bags that best suit their needs.
The bags come in six different sizes: 5-liter, 14-liter, 33-liter, 45-liter, 76-liter and 92-liter.
It was announced yesterday that after July 1, only regulation-sized bags will be accepted for the collection of regular household trash.
Recyclables such as cans, jars, newspapers and clothes, however, are allowed to be put in plastic or paper shopping bags for collection.
Those residents found not using regulation-sized bags or caught leaving garbage outside specified garbage collection points will face fines ranging between NT$1,200 and NT$4,500.
Ma was joined yesterday by rapper A-Liang (Pu Hsueh-liang,
"It's a challenging job because we're trying to change residents' ingrained habits concerning garbage disposal," Ma said.
"But this is the way we must go and I'm sure determination will lead to success," he said.
Around 80,000 of the city's municipal workers have been mobilized to promote the new program, according to Ma.
"We're are in effect waging a war and it is one we will win," Ma said. "The program will benefit ourselves and many generations to come. It's importance transcends politics," he said, adding that the goal of the program is to reduce total garbage volume and to encourage people to separate garbage that can be recycled.
The new garbage initiative means that collection fees for domestic waste will now be based on the volume of trash individual households generate, as opposed to the current system which bases fees on waster consumption.
City officials are certain the program will reduce the total volume of garbage generated, basing their plan on that of South Korea, which reduced its garbage output by 23 percent between 1995 to 1998 after adopting a similar program.
The city government also insists the new scheme will save residents money. Under the current setup, the average monthly garbage fee per household is about NT$144.
Under the new initiative, officials said, the fee would be reduced to NT$140 if the volume of garbage a person generates a day does not exceed 1.1kg and if the garbage is collected every three days.
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