Stinky Taiwan garbage trucks deliver official documents

Jan 28, 2011, 14:02 GMT

Taipei - Garbage trucks in a Taiwan city not only collect garbage, but also teach English and deliver official documents for the city government.

Chang Huang-chen, director of the southern city of Tainan's environment office, said Friday she hit upon the idea to use the trucks for delivery last month when Tainan County was incorporated into the city, creating a municipality covering some 2,000 square kilometres, making delivery of documents between the bureau and its branch offices more difficult.

'Some 100 documents pass between the Environmental Protection Bureau and its branch offices daily,' she said. 'Now when garbage trucks carry the waste to Tainan's two garbage incinerators, they pick up documents from the bureau, and drop them with the doormen at the incinerators.'

'When garbage trucks head to the areas of the local offices, they deliver the documents to these offices,' she said.

The measure can save the bureau 6 million Taiwan dollars (200,000 US dollars) a year, she added.

Tainan's garbage trucks grabbed headlines in 2002 when former mayor Hsu Tien-tsai began using them to teach English to people putting out their garbage.

Three hundred English sentences were recorded to be played by trucks, most of them phrases such as 'How are you? I am fine, thank you.'

While Hsu thought this was the first step towards turning Tainan into an international city, some locals complained about noise pollution and expatriates said hearing 'Are you hungry? No, I'm not' at garbage disposal time every day was driving them crazy.

The Environmental Protection Bureau has cut down on the English lessons with the aim of eventually stopping them altogether.

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