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Switzerland uses the principle of "the polluter pays". It is now illegal for cities to charge flat rates for garbage, because simple economics shows us that consumption of things that are unmetered is much higher than things which are metered. In this case, the "consumption" being metered is in fact "production of trash", otherwise known as "consumption of the space in the landfill/incinerator". In my commune, a 35l sack costs 2 CHF.

This is probably the real reason for the blue government trash bags in Taipei: they are probably using the same trash metering policy Switzerland uses.

At the moment the official sacks were introduced, I did some back of the envelope calculations and found that the reduction in our combination "electric and flat garbage tax" bill as it turned into a simple "electric" bill paid for about 2 sacks a week. With paper, PET, glass and compost recycling, we could easily consume less than 2 bags a week as a family of 4. But without recycling, it would easily be 4 bags! The garbage authorities noticed a huge increase in recycling with the introduction of the official sacks.

When the official government sacks were introduced here, there was some grumbling that "if these fancy sacks cost so much per bag, you'd expect that they at least never break!" Too bad that the economic concept of externalities is not widely enough understood.

Families with children (or disabled people) in diapers unavoidably produce more trash than their neighbours. In order to not penalise them, they receive a few rolls of free trash bags per year.

In my country we used to have bi-annual hard rubbish days where people would leave out old unwanted furniture to be collected by local council. When I had little money and no car, I could walk around the neighbourhood and drag home slightly damaged furniture, fix it up and furnish my home.

Now they've moved to just-in-time collection vouchers, so this perfectly serviceable furniture goes straight into landfill, and poor people don't get the chance to repurpose it.

On the positive side, the council pays a small reward for collecting and returning recyclable bottles, which provides the homeless with a chance of a modest legal income and stops some of them from panhandling.

This effectively happens once every year near American universities. Lots of furnishings in good condition, left in haste by students.

>The American system of throwing lots of great things into unlocked dumpsters does wonders for the poor. It's much more effective than non-profits, who might only help citizens/legal residents/etc. When I was broke in California, I ate food from dumpsters for about 6 months.

That's a little bizarre perspective though. "Yeah, we have a messy waste disposal system, but at least our many starving poor can eat off of the garbage".

How about we should ensure that we don't have either?

I can't imagine needing to eat from dumpsters for months. I hope circumstances have improved for you tremendously! Sometimes I forget the small blessings in life.

Thank you. I wish I could share some good news now, 10 years on, but sadly I can't. That time was during my exchange programme to UCSB.

When I graduated, I went to Canada on a Working Holiday visa. I found a job at a startup, but they only paid 600 CAD/month. I ended up doing remote work instead. In New Zealand I had a good summer job, so saved a little. In Japan I was unemployed, I foolishly went there without finding a job first. Then I worked in South Korea with North Korean refugees for 2 months on a stipend that covered food and shelter. Then a summer job in Austria that paid. Then volunteer missionary work, which emptied my savings. Then failing to find a job in the Netherlands. Then unpaid work at a PCB factory in China, but they let me stay in the dorm and eat in the cafeteria for free. Then a paid job in Shenzhen, and I had savings again. Then trying to start PhD in Korea, but the professor didn't pay my scholarship and my savings were gone soon. Then 5000 INR/mo for a social enterprise in India. Then 4 years in Taiwan for a microSD card manufacturer, and finally saving up enough for plane tickets once a year to visit family. But that ended a couple of months ago.

Now I'm unemployed, living with parents, trying to find anything. My dream had been to return to NZ or Canada but I'll give up dreams just to have income again. Those who give advice usually just criticise my résumé without ideas of how to find a job.

I've been trying since March. I tried job websites (Seek, Indeed). LinkedIn. Direct applications to companies. Custom cover letters. Rewriting my résumé twice. Contacting engineers via their Github profiles to offer to work together on open-source just to get an introduction. Side projects on Show HN. Several recruiters. Friends from previous summer jobs. Offering to start a data migration service with my old Apple IIgs or Mac Plus. Prayer. Now I'm just cold-emailing every company on the accredited employers list. Nothing's working. Please, if you have any idea what I can try next, please get in touch.

How about those remote work websites? Upwork and the like?

And you could start from non-related to IT work (you've done some anyway) like waiter, assistant etc, and with the salary, grow from there (try to find side-gigs, do some personal projects, etc).

Hey Peter,

Did a quick google search and found your GitHub repo. I feel for you on the "not finding a job" thing. I would offer this advice: Try and keep "empty" spots in your resume to a minimum. If there is anything you can add to it that can answer for the blank times, that shows employers that you are driven. My gut says you are good at "IT things," with no specific speciality in a particular area.

Another thing to keep in mind is this: the only job that is beneath you right now is one that doesn't pay. Take anything, because going to work and earning some wage will do wonders for your mental health, and will get you in a better mindset. On top of that, have you approached any recruiters in your area or in the areas you want to work? If you are clear to them that you are going to cover your own relocation costs, perhaps a company would be willing to look at a work visa applicant that way. I can tell you from my experience, from the companies I have worked for doing dev in the US, we wouldn't be interested in dealing with relocating a worker. I am in the West side of Michigan, US. I'm not saying you aren't employable, but just giving some info I've seen.

One of the areas you are inherently ahead of the curve on is i810 work. Your knowledge of IT and also working in Asian countries and abroad makes you a prime person for that kind of work. Perhaps you could market yourself in that way?

I hope this is more helpful to you than "lol get a better resume noob" kind of feedback you have been getting.

Thank you; it's really encouraging to read your comments. I agree - I'll take anything now. For most countries I already have the visa requirements memorised, and I can afford a one-way plane ticket and one month of survival costs. Even though that probably means taking a job in a place where I can't settle long-term, I'll take it now because something is better than nothing.

I suspect by your great amount of traveling around that the problem is not the job market, but your difficulty integrating with society (even outside of any one culture) as a whole. I hope that you can find stability, at least up to your yearnings to travel and live life as a rolling stone. The first step is for you to realize that who you are and what you want to achieve are in conflict with each other. You have had some very low points it sounds like and have not yet changed. Perhaps you never realized that the problem is not with those around you, but within your own self. This is a very self defeating illusion.

I stayed in Taiwan for 4 years to prove that I can settle. Unfortunately their immigration policy can't make that permanent.

I was born with nationality issues that caused me to wander, looking for somewhere that will welcome me. Identity-wise, I associate well with TCKs, international students, and the CouchSurfing community. A full explanation why I don't have a "home" is in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17695674

In Germany it depends on the town. You separate paper most of the time (maybe nearly everywhere), and some apartment complexes also have bins for organics (not composting per se, but will be taken for composting). Some towns mandate you also separate all recyclable plastic, some don't.

If you have bulky stuff you either put it on the curb or haul it to communal collection stations/scrapyard, where it's free to offload "a small van full per day" if you have a local license plate. Sometimes people are waiting in front of it and will take anything looking good right out of your hands, but the employees at the scrapyard may also grab some things, afaik they resell this for a low price then (a bit picky though, they didn't want a CRT monitor that I was still using until that day because they already had a slew of 17" LCDs, psss :P). I don't think it's illegal to remove stuff there, but I'd have to check - or you have to pay a small fee.

There have actually been court cases where people were sued by supermarkets when they salvaged produce from the bins (probably trespassing charges, you can google for "containern"=dumpster diving + "urteile"=verdict).