Well-known fact: Taiwanese people love food. Lesser-known fact: Taiwanese people also waste a lot of food. The Environmental Protection Agency says that last year, up to 590,000 tons of food went to waste in Taiwan.
If you were to put all this into full-sized food waste bins and stack them on top of each other, they would reach the height of 13,500 Taipei 101s. Now, some people in the central county of Nantou have a good idea about how to put this wasted food to good use.
What do you usually use for fertilizer? In several greenhouses in Zhushan, Nantou County, plants are flourishing and flowers are abloom. The people growing these beautiful plants have something special up their sleeves: they are a group of garbage collectors who use food waste as fertilizer. There’s no need to worry about the smell: the waste is drained of excess moisture, minced, and then fermented for three months until it becomes organic fertilizer.
Zhushan’s garbage collectors say they are using the fertilizer to grow their own flowers. They have been decorating common spaces with these planters, even donating some to local schools.
Zhushan Township’s mayor thinks it would be a good idea to give these plants to locals who wish to decorate their living spaces, too.
This use of food scraps for fertilizer seems to be a growing trend: there are 50 facilities just like the ones in Zhushan acrossTaiwan. The Environmental Protection Agency says it will provide funding to cities and counties in order to allow them to purchase their own fertilizer makers. That way, they will be able to make fertilizer for all.