Taipei testing out trashcans with lids to control rodent population

Taipei testing out trashcans with lids to control rodent population

2026-09-10

Taipei is a big city with few trashcans. And, for street strollers in the districts of Xinyi and Da’an, the bins now have lids that are difficult to push open, meaning throwing out the trash could result in dirty hands, and, in the worst scenario, injured fingers. Let’s take a look at some trashcans that are known to bite.

In Taipei, the slow burn epidemic of disappearing trashcans has plagued the city for years. And now, to make matters worse, once you find a trashcan it’s essentially impossibly to open.

Member of public
Finds trashcans hard to open
It’s too tight; I thought the trashcan was sealed, because just a second ago I couldn’t get it to open.

Member of public
Scared of getting fingers pinched
It’s a little too tight, which makes it difficult to put trash inside. And then your hand will likely get dirty, which is another inconvenience in itself. It’s also easy to get pinched.

A long umbrella might seem like a smart life hack, if you’re trying to keep your hands clean. But if you take a close look, you’ll find this lid is vicious, so vicious that it’ll slice up an umbrella. Zooming in on its canopy, one can see the aftermath of throwing away trash like this.

Lin Li
Reporter
Typically, when you’re going for a stroll down a street, you might have a bag and be carrying an umbrella. Then you buy a drink, which you’ll probably end up wanting to throw away eventually, but you have your cellphone in one hand. In the past, throwing out trash was a one-hand process, yet after trashcans got these lids with tight screws, you need to react quickly, like this, in order to get the trash to drop inside.

The purpose of replacing old trashcans with these new ones was to control the rat population, because the opening of the trashcans was so large, making it easy to throw trash inside. But the open-top cans were great for rats looking to feast on the offerings inside. A city councilor suggested using trashcans with push-open lids, thereby preventing trash from falling out and stopping rodents from getting inside. But the downside is these trashcans could hurt human hands. The government is tracking the performance of these 24 trashcans posted in the districts of Xinyi and Da’an.

Hsu Kai-chun
Taipei Dept. of Environmental Protection
We considered that these areas are closer to downtown, so there might be more people walking around. We thought that by putting the trashcans in these areas we could see how much people use them. Compared with the cans of the past, the trashcans now have these lids, which do, indeed, cause some inconvenience to people. We’ll continue to evaluate the situation.

Taipei’s Department of Environmental Protection said that if these new trashcans don’t actually make the city’s environment any cleaner, then after three months they’ll get rid of them. The lids’ screws have been loosened up a bit, making the trashcans themselves easier to use, and hopefully, less likely to bite down on the fingers of people opposed to littering.

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