A team of foreign residents and Indigenous volunteers has joined forces to tackle an illegal trash dumping issue in their community. But they say more needs to be done.
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00:00It's dirty, sweaty work, pulling bag after bag of trash out from the brush.
00:07But it's a labour of love for 46-year-old French chef Guillaume Brissot, who could no
00:12longer ignore the piles of garbage he'd noticed building up around the rural roads near his
00:17home in Yilan in Taiwan's northeast.
00:21I live here.
00:22It's my neighbourhood.
00:23And I very often have a walk or a run here in the morning.
00:27And so I noticed that the riverbed is always full of trash.
00:31I also saw people throwing trash from the bridge down to the river, and that happens
00:39really often.
00:41To help with the clean-up, Brissot enlisted a volunteer from Wild Ocean Taiwan.
00:46That's a community project he started to help protect local marine ecosystems.
00:51He also brought in some friends from a local indigenous village.
00:54I think this kind of trash should be started by the locals.
01:00And I think the government should provide more support to help protect the environment.
01:07Between them, the volunteers hit several spots along each side of the Luodong River, which
01:11runs right through Yilan County.
01:14A mix of household and industrial, this mound of garbage was all pulled from just along
01:19this riverbank.
01:21It's just one of several dump sites along this single stretch of road.
01:27And it's just a fraction of the problem, Brissot tells me, as recent storms already washed
01:32much of the illegally dumped trash into the ocean.
01:36Signs in the area do warn against dumping, but it seems to be doing little to solve the
01:40issue.
01:41They all have a phone number to use if you notice littering or trash.
01:48That's what I did.
01:50I don't think a lot of people are calling.
01:53And that's the problem.
01:54Another part of the problem could be related to Taiwan's trash collection system.
01:59In Taiwan, most people need to meet the trash trucks to have their garbage collected.
02:04While effective in cities, trash collection routes in rural areas can be less accommodating.
02:20The local river management bureau says they actively investigate reports of illegal dumping
02:27and seek prosecution where possible, and that they're working with the local community on
02:32several projects.
02:49Brissot and his team's haul, while significant, is just the tip of the iceberg.
03:01The local government says they're doing their part too, but unless the root cause of the
03:05issue is addressed, dump sites like these will continue to pile up.
03:10Alex Chen, Jonathan Kaplan and Rhys Ayres in Yilan for Taiwan Plus.