Wedding photos with Taiwan's 4,000-ton garbage mountain

The backdrop for the wedding photos is a mountain with 4,000 tons of garbage, taller than the four-story building next to it. The couple poses smiling in front of the stinky landscape. Hseuh, the bride, wearing a classic, pristine white dress, tries to hold her breath. The stench is unbearable. The photographer, incredulous, quickly takes several snapshots. In his 30-year career with the camera, it is the first time that newlyweds have hired him to do a photo shoot in a landfill.

In Taiwan, an island the size of Belgium where 23 million people live, there are several ideal places to capture that moment that tops the wedding album.. In the capital, Taipei, it is common to choose a panoramic view of the entire city from the top of the largest skyscraper, which has 106 floors.. If you want a more natural environment, you will find a long list of national parks.. There is also no shortage of postcards on the beaches or in the Buddhist temples. But no one had ever chosen a stage surrounded by garbage.

Hseuh had the idea.. She was the one who chose Puli, a city in the center of the island that has a big problem with excess waste, to take the photographs.. The mountain of garbage is in the middle of a neighborhood, next to the waste management office. There it is piled up until trucks take it to a treatment plant, which is usually once a month, whereupon it accumulates quickly again.

Hseuh uploaded the session to his Facebook account last Saturday and the snapshots went viral. Local newspapers sought out the bride to ask why she had chosen the Puli garbage dump for her wedding photos.. Hseuh responded that he was seeking to draw attention to the waste disposal problems affecting many cities in Taiwan.

Their environmental denunciation was highly applauded in a nation that, despite the couple's successful performance, is an example in environmental policy.. In two decades, Taiwan has gone from being dubbed the garbage island to boasting one of the best waste management programs in the world.

In the 1990s, in the midst of the economic acceleration, when Taiwan was considered one of Asia's economic tigers, two-thirds of the island's landfills were full and there was garbage everywhere.. Cleaning teams barely had the capacity to collect 70% of all the waste generated.. Now, the streets are usually clean and in Taipei, for example, it is very difficult to find a container. Despite its high population density, the country has one of the highest recycling rates in the world, 55%, above the average of Western powers.

Part of the success is in the famous yellow trucks that travel the streets five days a week maintaining a “garbage does not touch the ground” policy.. Residents directly carry garbage bags – provided by the Government – from their homes to trucks, resulting in more hygienic streets. The neighbors find out when the truck passes because the vehicle alerts them with a speaker that plays classical music, especially pieces by Beethoven.. In the end, the harvesting process becomes a picturesque community ritual.