April in Qinpu, Taoyuan is the greenest! Following its opening in April of this year, the Qinpu location of Taoyuan Children's Art Museum hosted a series of celebratory events including an outdoor market. For this outdoor market, Greenpeace East Asia Taipei volunteers partnered with reusable foodware service providers to promote reusable foodware through marketing and educational activities. This initiative successfully reduced over 4,000 pieces of single-use foodware, effectively making this event more sustainable and greener! Let's delve a little more into how the volunteers made this initiative so successful.
Plastic, be gone
In the lush green pasture stands a beautiful hill-like building with a white slanted rooftop, next to a vibrant green pond. The Taoyuan Children's Art Museum is not only a magical world for children to explore art but also a perfect location for families to practice sustainable living.
For four consecutive weekends starting from Children's Day on April 4, The Taoyuan Children's Art Museum hosted "Little Artist's Market" in their long corridor with vaulted ceiling. There were a variety of art events such as painting and dancing alongside many food vendors offering culinary delicacies that delighted both the eyes and the taste buds.
Specifically on April 13 and 14, the museum kickstarted an initiative to reduce the use of single-use foodware. Greenpeace East Asia Taipei volunteers, reusable foodware companies, and other vendors seized the opportunity to promote reusable foodware, successfully reducing a total of 4,090 pieces of single-use foodware.
According to an estimate calculated by ChingPiao – a Taiwanese social enterprise that offers comprehensive solutions to minimize disposable food containers – the reduction of foodware waste prevented 144.3kg of carbon emissions and saved 3,258kg of water. To give a visual illustration, the potential waste, if stacked vertically, could have reached more than 81% (or ~412 meters) of the iconic Taipei 101 building's height! This serves as a perfect example that large events can also achieve great environmental savings.
Greenpeace East Asia Taipei Community Outreach Campaigner Cheril Chiang said, "I am thankful that the event organizer and vendors were willing to join our initiative. During the week of promoting reusable foodware, we could see that the amount of waste was visibly decreasing. The event organizer also told us that before using the reusable food containers they had to collect trash every 40 minutes to an hour, but with the reusable containers they only had to collect trash once a day!"
How did 50 volunteers kickstart a circular lifestyle?
The successful plastic reduction at the event was made possible by the seamless teamwork of our 50 Greenpeace volunteers.
The volunteers tirelessly explained the importance of using reusable foodware to all the market attendees and invited them to try it out. Some volunteers were stationed at the Greenpeace booth to help guide the attendees through the process of renting and returning the reusable foodware, while other volunteers worked closely with the food vendors to assist with the transport of reusable foodware and interviewed them about their thoughts on the reusable foodware.
There were also volunteers who read the illustrated book "Plastic in My Home?" to the children who attended the market, increasing children's awareness as to why we need better environmental protection. The volunteers also collected the opinions of the people on Taiwan's Plastic Reduction Policy for the Taoyuan City Government.
Don't let the next generation pay for your consumption!
Joyce, one of the volunteers, said, "It's heartwarming to see so many people carrying the reusable containers and less single-use waste. Many of them even gave us a thumbs up after our explanation!"
Volunteer Tobey said, "I hope that I could do more to influence the people around me, spreading awareness on the importance of environmental protection."
Volunteer Cheng Chieh said, "Seeing all the pets and children reminded me of the importance of living sustainably. I want to make sure the pets can thrive and children don't have to pay for the destructions of our generation."
Together we can give the next generation a greener future!
Greenpeace East Asia Taipei volunteers successfully demonstrated that reducing plastic waste in large, public events is possible. The initiative not only received overwhelming support from the public, but also planted the seeds of environmental protection in the minds of all the children who attended. Moreover, the success of this event illustrated that people were likely and willing to use reusable containers, paving the way to a greener future.
"In Taiwan, it's possible for reusable containers to be integrated into daily life and become a trend, and large-scale events are quickly becoming the preferred venues to promote reusable foodware. But this requires the government to allocate more budget to reduce plastic waste at its source, " said Yi-Ting Tseng, Greenpeace East Asia Taipei Community Outreach Campaigner.
Delivering people's voices to the Taoyuan City Government: We want a plastic-free future!
By the end of 2022, Taoyuan City accumulated 118,000 tonnes of untreated waste and ranked #4 amongst Taiwanese cities with most waste. Yi-Ting said, "Mayor Chang San-Cheng of Taoyuan City promised to phase out the waste collection station Da-Pu by the end of the year. We call on the government to take more aggressive action to ban single-use foodware and water bottles in order to effectively reduce wastes in events, which in turn will reduce the cost of waste management, protect the environment, and maintain the happiness index of Taoyuan City."
On May 31, Greenpeace volunteers delivered a petition letter to the Taoyuan City Government, calling on Mayor Shang-Zheng Chang to prioritize plastic reduction efforts. The volunteers also delivered the 229 postcards from Taiwanese families, signifying their support for plastic reduction.
Representative from the Mayor's Office received the petition letter and postcards and stated, "I would like to thank Greenpeace for the hard work. We will work to accelerate the plastic reduction efforts. We have been closely following the plastic reduction efforts for large events, such as at the Lamigo baseball stadium. We are also working on promoting reusable foodware in public and traditional markets. In the future, we hope to extend the action to private households. We have also stopped providing bottled water in the city government meetings."
Building a plastic free, cleaner future for the next generation was the key message that Greenpeace East Asia Taipei volunteers wanted to share with the Taoyuan Children's Art Museum and the city government. We hope that more people can join us in action by becoming Greenpeace volunteers because together, we can build a better planet for the next generation.
Bill Chou is Content Writer for Greenpeace East Asia Taipei.
Coco Wu translated this blog and is a volunteer for Greenpeace East Asia Taipei.
