Listening to Taiwan's musical garbage trucks

There is no more pervasive music in Taiwan than the broadcast of garbage trucks as they call residents to dump their household waste. From 1968 until today, Bądarzewska’s classic piano piece “The Maiden’s Prayer” has been the dominant garbage truck melody. In asserting that the near-constant presence of this music has contributed to a strong awareness of environmental degradation, this chapter draws on two ecocritical concepts: Nixon’s “slow violence” and Morton’s “hyperobjects.” Slow violence unfolds gradually and largely out of sight; its effects are incremental and accretive. Hyperobjects are massively distributed in time and place (e.g., microplastics); non-locality is a key feature. The Taiwan case demonstrates, however, that the almost daily collection routine brings people into contact with fragments of the greater whole and opens a link for some to conceive of the looming garbage hyperobject to which household waste belongs. The immediate physicality of Taiwan’s garbage collection routine, and the regular sounding of “The Maiden’s Prayer,” keeps the long emergency of waste disposal forefront in the public’s imagination. This everyday engagement with waste heightens awareness of larger issues of environmental degradation and is no doubt partly responsible for Taiwan’s notable success at reducing household waste.