TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Greater Taipei will stop asking households to sort raw and cooked food waste starting next year, as both cities move to match the central government’s policy to phase out food waste as pig feed.
UDN reported Sunday that both cities’ environment authorities said they will now collect mixed food waste and send it to composting or other treatment sites. They added that they are already reworking public guides and will start rolling them out soon.
Taipei’s Environmental Protection Bureau said cooked scraps will no longer be used to feed pigs and confirmed all household food waste will go into the same bin starting next year. The bureau noted that residents do not need to change how they bag their waste.
New Taipei’s Environmental Protection Bureau said homes will also stop sorting scraps on Jan. 1 and only need to drain water before handing them to collectors. The bureau added that the waste will be reused in several ways, such as composting, black soldier fly farming, and slurry-to-power systems.
Other counties and cities are taking different paths, as Taichung and Changhua County will still collect raw and cooked scraps separately because they use different downstream systems. Tainan and Kaohsiung will also keep sorting rules, since part of their waste goes to compost and part goes to high-speed fermenters or incinerators.
National Taiwan University Environmental Engineering Assistant Professor Liu Ming-lung (劉銘龍) said local incinerators should add bioenergy units during upgrades to handle food waste more efficiently. Liu said plants could work with wastewater centers to co-digest food-waste slurry with sludge to boost green power output.
Currently, Greater Taipei asks homes to sort raw and cooked food waste, drain the water, and hand it to garbage trucks, and this system has been in place for years. Residents have long followed the rule of putting pig-feed food waste in red bins and compost-only food waste in blue bins.
