Environmental issues in Taiwan, by Jenny

Taiwan's environmental problems include dealing with industrial waste, the effects of tea and fruit farming in mountains, the runoff from agricultural chemicals, over-development for recreational and tourist facilities in the mountains, nuclear energy, air quality. Read more about it here:

http://twgeog.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/english/environment/environment_problems.htm

A recent fim called 看見臺灣 Beyond Beauty: Taiwan from Above was entirely filmed from a helicopter.  It shows Taiwan's beauty but also the effects humans have on their environment.

Here are some photos of things we noticed about how Taiwan people live and how they are dealing with environmental issues.

A river with fish in Zhubei

How do people travel in Zhubei and Hsinchu and the rest of Taiwan?

 Many people travel by motorscooters.  Some have private cars.  

Electric bike that Greg uses sometimes

High speed rail station in Zhubei

High Speed Rail goes from the north of Taiwan all the way to the south, along the west coast. If you do the whole trip it takes four hours.

The public transportation system is well developed.  The local government in our area provides some free buses for people to ride in order to reduce traffic on the roads.  This is one of several free buses I can take from Zhubei to Hsinchu. This "orange bus" goes from the High Speed Rail station in Zhubei, past our neighborhood, to Hsinchu Science park in Hsinchu, which is within a 15 minute walk of my university, National ChiaoTung University.

This is a free bus that goes past our house.  We can take it to downtown Zhubei.  But usually we ride bikes instead.


This is the bike rack in our neighborhood where my bike patiently waits all day for me to come back on the number three free bus, which goes to Hsinchu Science park, near my university.

In Taipei you can rent a "Youbike" by the half hour.  You pay using the same card that you swipe for getting on a bus or subway.   Most of the bike stations are near subway stops.

People sort their trash and recycling into categories, including a food waste category.  I'm told the pigs eat it as their slops. Yum!  I think people here are quite diligent about sorting their trash.

Trash and recycling trucks at NCTU.

Notice the two words (大 big and 小small) on the flusher handle.  There are two different volumes of water according to what you contribute to the toilet.

Most public toilets are the squatty potty variety.  This is more sanitary than a sit toilet because none of your body actually touches the toilet.  Also, you don't need to put paper on the seat, so maybe it saves paper too.

Most people hang their laundry to dry.  Few people use dryers.  These racks are on the roof of our building.

This is a man exercising the "Feb 28 Peace Park"in Taipei.  


The fellow on the riding mower is cutting the grass at National Chiaotung University.  In Taiwan the lawns are full of a wide variety of weeds and grasses.  They don't try to grow a monoculture lawn.  Therefore they don't use a lot of lawn chemicals like in some countries.  Also, they tend to let the grass grow to about 8 inches before they cut it.  That uses less fuel than cutting it on a regular basis.  Over all, there are a lot fewer lawns in Taiwan than in the US.  Most of them are in public parks or school campuses.  I haven't seen many private lawns here because most people live in apartment buildings, not private homes.


Our neighborhood here in Zhubei has lots of parks. This is a park with a fun climbing rig.


This bike path is about three blocks from our house.  We use it to ride toward downtown Zhubei.  It parallels a river and lots of people grow vegetables in the floodplain between the river and a dike. Beyond the dike is the city.  It is a nice bit of nature in the city.

I watched this egret or whatever it is for a while near one of my bus stops.  When I got out my camera he flew away. He had some fancy feathers in his hairdo.



There are a lot of empty lots in our neighborhood.  Some are used by neighbors as vegetable gardens.  Some of them are just weed lots.

Vegetables on Liujia 7th Road.


 

This lot is owned by a hospital.  The hospital let people grow vegetables on the land when they were not using it.

This spring they put up a sign saying that people should harvest everything and clear out their things. Because construction would start soon.

Shortly after, the garden was bulldozed.  Now it has a fence around it and they are building something.

This is the view from our apartment building roof.  Some of those green spaces you see have since been turned into construction sites.  I hope they are not over building. When I ask people about it they say a lot of people from China have money to come buy apartments here.

Here is the view in April, 2014.

This red dot on the map is the fourth nuclear power plant in Taiwan.  There are three already up and running, two in the north and one in the south.  The fourth one is stalled because lots of people in Tawian don't want to open it. They don't trust nuclear power, especially after seeing what happened in Fukashima, Japan.

Below are a few photos of life in Taiwan.

Greg's students from Zhaomen Junior High on a field trip.

These are some of Greg's junior high school English students.

A temple in Beipu

A restaurant