Garbage Truck Music and Sustainability in Contemporary Taiwan

Abstract

Garbage in Taiwan is at the center of a musical assemblage that resonates beyond the waste collection soundscape. Taiwanese garbage trucks are musical: Badarzewska's Maiden's Prayer or Beethoven's För Elise announce the brigade's arrival at designated times and pick up locations. Neighbors stream into the street for a turn at depositing their presorted waste into the proper receptacles. Taiwan's semi-tropical climate combined with a densely situated human population, and the presence of well-established rat and cockroach populations, combine to make garbage management a matter of daily urgency. This chapter takes Taiwan's pop music, primarily Mandopop, from the early 1980s through the mid-2010s as evidence of ways in which everyday practices aimed at dealing sustainably with household waste have seeped into a wide range of sensibilities.