50 Ways To Help The Planet - A Checklist

Take a look at this and see what else you can do for the environment. To put a more local twist on some of the 50 items, rather than worrying about coffee stirrers (no. 44), we should be worrying about disposable chopsticks and plastic straws.

Few people in Taiwan use dishwashers, so no. 3 isn't of much relevance here. The recycling rate for glass (no. 5) isn't very good; discarded Whisbih bottles are all over the place. No. 7 urges people to dry their clothes on a line, not in a dryer. One advantage of Taiwan's warm climate is that people here don't need dryers.

I'm already vegetarian at least one day a week (no. 8). A lot of Taiwanese are vegetarian twice a month for religious reasons. As for buying local (no. 22), I do when it comes to beer. No. 24 is "invest in your own coffee cup." For Taiwan, this should be "invest in your own tea cup," as millions of styrofoam cups are thrown away each day.

There are no excuses the lack of telecommuting in Taiwan (no. 33), as this article explains. Plastic bags are massively overused in Taiwan (no. 40), but there's hope they can be made to decompose.

I don't pay my bills online (no. 47). I'm not sure how this can be done in Taiwan. I do know that if you pay automatically by bank arrangement, they still mail you a receipt. Here in Taiwan, bank statements mailed out at regular intervals (no. 48) are rare. Banks and the post office issue account holders with a passbook which gets updated everytime you deposit or withdraw money.