A Piano Piece With a Practical Purpose
Beethoven’s “Für Elise” is a peculiar calling card for a refuse lorry. Its companion tune, “A Maiden’s Prayer” by Polish composer Tekla Bądarzewska-Baranowska, is scarcely more obvious. Yet those are the melodies broadcast through loudspeakers as collection vehicles make their rounds. Anyone expecting an ice-cream van may be disappointed by the cargo.
The tune is a recognisable signal rather than decoration. Residents describe the music as the moment to take the rubbish outside. It reaches people in their flats before the vehicle reaches their building.
At Christmas the lorries play Christmas music, at Chinese New Year traditional tunes, and some local governments have changed their songs altogether. People are listening for the lorry, not attending a recital.
The Handover Beside the Yellow Lorry
At the back of the yellow compaction lorry, residents throw in bags of general rubbish themselves. Another vehicle carries containers for recycling and food scraps.
Watch the handover and the contents stop being interchangeable. The compactor takes the tied bag. Bottles go to a recycling bin; food scraps are tipped into their own container. Each kind of rubbish has its destination while the lorries are standing there.
I would feel faintly self-conscious taking my rubbish straight to the waiting crew. It is an everyday household errand conducted out in the street, in view of other people arriving with their bags.
Why the Blue Bag Matters
The blue plastic bags carried to the compactor are official Taipei bags for general household rubbish, bought at convenience stores. That purchase is the city’s charge. Previously, the collection charge was connected to the household water bill, which said little about how much a home threw away.
Recyclable material does not need an official bag. The distinction is visible before the vehicles even arrive: the blue sack holds what must go as general rubbish, while recyclable things can be kept apart. The sorting is done before anyone hears the melody.
It is a rather intimate place to put a city’s accounting rules: inside something you tie shut in the kitchen.
The Music Box Came From Osaka
The music’s origins have less ceremony than the melodies might imply. Music scholar Nancy Guy traced Taipei’s early musical lorries to vehicles bought from Japan, fitted with a sound device from Noboru Electric in Osaka. Each box was wound up and played a single tune, which the lorry turned into a street-wide announcement.
The supplier offered a catalogue of tunes, including “A Maiden’s Prayer” and “Für Elise”. Guy found no evidence that officials deliberately selected the former when the musical vehicles were bought. She also cautions that the point at which Beethoven’s piece entered the working repertoire is uncertain. The tune that seems so natural on a Taipei street may have begun as a choice made in a manufacturer’s catalogue.
A Conversation at the Collection Point
The stop attracts more than rubbish. For many older residents the collection point is a place to catch up with neighbours; one called the trip down a kind of exercise.
Other households pay a neighbour to carry their rubbish down. The lorry does not lift a household’s bag from outside its front door; somebody has to bring it.
The yellow lorry takes the bags and moves away, its music travelling down the street. A conversation on the pavement has no reason to end when the compactor does.
