A Nantou County couple on Saturday took their wedding photographs in front of a “garbage mountain” to raise awareness of waste management problems in the mountainous central county.
The couple posed in wedding attire in front of the temporary trash storage site operated by sanitation services in Puli Township (埔里), one of several locations in the county where garbage has been piling up in the past few years due to a lack of an incinerator and insufficient landfill space.
The bride-to-be, surnamed Hsueh (薛), wrote on Facebook that the photographer thought she was joking when she proposed taking the photos in front of the garbage heap.
Photo courtesy of Puli Township Sanitation crew
Their driver said it was the first time he had heard such a request in his more than 30 years of shuttling couples to wedding shoots, she wrote.
Despite the “strong odor” at the trash dump, Hsueh said she hoped the photos would bring attention to the issue of excess waste, and would encourage people to create less garbage and help keep Taiwan beautiful.
Nantou Environmental Protection Bureau Director Lee Yi-shu (李易書) yesterday said that multiple townships in Nantou do not have landfills or permanent facilities for garbage.
While the bureau has arranged for some of the trash to be moved to other regions, it would only account for a small portion of the waste generated in Nantou each day, Lee said.
To truly resolve the issue and get its “garbage mountain” removed, Puli Township needs to designate space for a permanent landfill, he said.
Earlier this year, the bureau said that about 240,000 tonnes of garbage had piled up at temporary storage sites around the county, with the largest by volume in Caotun Township (草屯).
With a population of 477,000, Nantou produces about 2.62 million tonnes of garbage each day, it said.
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