Army of yellow garbage trucks blasting out classical jingles brings out a Pavlovian response to take out bins
Taiwan
In the last few decades, Taiwan has transformed itself from “garbage island” to one of the world’s best managers of household trash, and it’s done so with a soundtrack. Armies of yellow trucks trundle through the streets five days a week, blasting earsplitting snippets of either Beethoven’s Für Elise or A Maiden’s Prayer by Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska.
Ms Chen, 60, waits for her trash to be collected: ‘Whenever I hear the music, I always think that I need to hurry up.’Chen can’t remember the first time she heard the jingle. “It was many, many years ago, a very long time ago,” she tells the Guardian. “Whenever I hear the music, I always think that I need to hurry up to take out the garbage.”
When the convoy of trucks arrive, residents swing into action, striding over to the big yellow compactor and expertly lobbing their bags into the back before moving on to give recycling andThe system is different to the weekly collection of wheelie bins at dawn that is more common around the world. The “garbage doesn’t touch the ground” policy requires residents to bring trash directly out of their homes to the trucks, resulting in more hygienic streets in Taiwan’s sweaty climate.
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