The always-excellent Tree Hugger has an article called Greening Your Rental. Most of it is applicable to Taiwan.
The ten ways in which you can reduce your impact on the environment through your home are: Location (live near your place of work, and/or near somewhere with public transportation); Living in a small or shared abode (but apartments in Taiwan seem to be getting bigger); Working with your landlord to increase energy efficiency (you can do some things yourself, such as plugging drafts to make air-conditioning more efficient); Good lifestyle habits (turning off appliances when they're not being used); Using renewable power (Taiwan is a good place for solar stoves, but I've never seen one in the flesh; you'd need a big balcony or access to the roof); Replacing incandescent lights with compact fluorescents or LEDs (but what happens to incandescent bulbs that go into the trash?); Saving water (even if the pricing system offers no incentive); Redecorating only with eco-friendly paints; And buying secondhand furniture (there aren't many used-furniture stores in Taiwan, but dumpster diving is a possibility).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I have always been intrigued by solar water heaters many of which I have seen in Israel and China. Many are made in China. But I have not seen many at all in Taiwan. Perhaps that is due to the lack of upkeep of apartment buildings and the "jia gai" illegal extra structures on roofs.
According to one of the articles I link to in the March 31 post, the number of Taiwan households with solar panels is expected to go up from 360,000 in 2006 to 540,000 in 2010.
Popularity of solar panels seems to vary hugely from area to area. The South obviously has more than the North, but even within the South, one neighborhood seems to have 30%+ coverage, another neighbor <5%. Don't know why that should be...
Post a Comment