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How do you take out the garbage in Taipei? Truck times, official bags, recycling and food waste

In Taipei, household garbage doesn't go in a bin on the street. You wait for the garbage truck and hand it to the crew yourself, and general waste has to be in an official city garbage bag. We cover how to look up truck times, where to buy the bags, which days recycling is collected, why food waste now goes in a single bin, and how bulky waste pickups and fines work.

Seal Co-living team Updated 16 min read Translated from Chinese · 中文原文

Potted plants along a Taipei lane
Photo: Esther T / Unsplash
On this page
  1. When does the garbage truck come, and where does it stop near you?
  2. Where do you buy official garbage bags, and how much is a pack?
  3. How do you sort recycling, and which days is it collected?
  4. Do you still separate raw and cooked food waste? One bin since 2026
  5. How do you get rid of a mattress, old furniture or a pile of suitcases?
  6. How much is the fine for dumping garbage, and can foreigners be fined?
  7. Do you still have to chase the garbage truck in a co-living house?
  8. FAQ
  9. Sources

In Taipei, household garbage never goes into a big bin on the street. The city runs a "fixed times, fixed places, garbage never touches the ground" system (定時定點、垃圾不落地): garbage trucks stop at fixed points on a fixed timetable, and residents carry their bags downstairs and hand them to the collection crew in person. Most newcomers find the first time a bit confusing. Start with these points.

  1. Garbage trucks come five days a week, with no collection on Wednesdays or Sundays. To find out what time the truck comes and where it stops, use the DEP's garbage collection route search.
  2. General waste must go in Taipei City official garbage bags, sold at convenience stores. Recycling and food waste are collected free once sorted, with no special bag.
  3. Recycling is roughly split into two groups. Paper, clean plastic bags and old clothes go out on Mondays and Fridays; bottles, cans, drink cartons and polystyrene foam go out on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
  4. Drain your food waste and tip it into the food waste bin at the back of the garbage truck. Since 1 Jan 2026 there have been no separate bins for pig feed and compost.
  5. Leaving a bag of garbage by the road costs NT$3,600, even if it's your first offense in a year.

When does the garbage truck come, and where does it stop near you?

Every route has its own timetable, and a truck may stop at several points on the same street. You can ask the neighbors, of course, but looking it up yourself once is more reliable.

On the DEP's garbage collection route search, you can search by district and time slot, enter an address to see the collection points within a set distance, or turn on your phone's location and look at the map. A district search lists stops in order of collection time, and stops the truck has already passed turn gray. An address search sorts them from nearest to farthest.

Most trucks come in the evening and take recycling and food waste on the same run. They play music while collecting. When you hear it, the truck is almost there.

A first run usually goes like this:

  1. Look up the nearest collection point with your home address and write down the time.
  2. Go down a few minutes early with your garbage, recycling and food waste, and wait at the stop.
  3. When the truck arrives, throw your garbage into the garbage truck, hand recycling to the recycling truck and tip food waste into the food waste bin.

Missed the truck, or need to get rid of garbage on a Wednesday or Sunday?

Take it to a drop-off point with set hours (限時收受點). There are 30 across the city, and fewer than half are open every day from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. The rest keep their own hours. Some close in the afternoon, some close early or stay shut on Wednesdays and Sundays, and a few work the other way around and open only on those days. Planning to go in the evening, or on a Wednesday or Sunday? Check before you leave.

Addresses and opening hours are on the DEP's list of drop-off points, and the points are marked on the route search map too. They don't all accept the same things: some take general waste only, some don't take food waste, and on Wednesdays and Sundays there are extra points just for food waste. Garbage you bring to a drop-off point still has to be in an official bag, and you can be fined if it isn't.

Public holidays and long weekends don't change anything; Wednesday and Sunday are still the only days off. Lunar New Year has its own schedule, announced each year. If a typhoon or another disaster stops collection, the DEP says so on its homepage and through the media.

Where do you buy official garbage bags, and how much is a pack?

Convenience store chains such as Seven-Eleven (統一) and FamilyMart (全家) sell them, and so does any shop with a "專用垃圾袋銷售處" (official garbage bag sales point) sign. At convenience stores you can pay in cash, with an EasyCard or by e-payment. Bags come by the pack only and are never sold one at a time.

Pricing is by volume: NT$0.36 per liter. That rate has stayed the same since 1 Mar 2013, and on 3 Apr 2026 the DEP said publicly that it has no plans to raise it. The sizes people buy most:

Size Bags per pack Price per pack
5 liters 20 NT$36
14 liters 20 NT$100
25 liters 20 NT$180
33 liters 20 NT$237

There are also 3, 76 and 120 liter bags. If you live alone and don't throw out much, 5 or 14 liters is plenty. A 14-liter bag works out to just NT$5.

The plastic bag you buy at the checkout in a supermarket or convenience store is called a "dual-use bag" (環保兩用袋; small NT$1, medium NT$2, large NT$5). Take it home and it doubles as an official garbage bag. Shops only sell as many as your shopping needs, so you can't stock up on extras, and you can't buy one on its own without buying anything else.

A few more rules for the bags:

  • Don't put a full official bag inside another plastic bag, and don't stuff it into a cardboard box.
  • The plastic wrapping around a pack of bags can't be used to hold garbage. You can recycle it as a clean plastic bag, though.
  • New Taipei City's official bags work in Taipei as well. The two cities have accepted each other's bags since 1 May 2019.
  • Don't buy bags of unknown origin, because a fake bag gets you fined just the same. Genuine bags carry a laser anti-counterfeit label: shine your phone's flashlight on it and "TPE" appears in the top left corner.

How do you sort recycling, and which days is it collected?

Recycling costs nothing and needs no official bag. Sort it and hand it to the recycling truck. Taipei divides recyclables into flat items, three-dimensional items and other items, and each group has its own days:

Category What it includes Collection days
Flat items (平面類) Waste paper, cardboard boxes, paper bags, newspapers and magazines, old books, clean plastic bags, clean old clothes Mondays and Fridays
Three-dimensional items (立體類) PET and other plastic bottles, steel and aluminum cans, glass bottles, paper cups, paper meal boxes, milk cartons, juice boxes, polystyrene foam, broken small appliances Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays
Other items (其他類) Light bulbs and tubes, household batteries, power banks and cooking oil, each packed separately Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays

Can't remember which day is which? Don't worry about it. The DEP's FAQ says plainly that if your recycling is sorted, the crew may not refuse it, whatever day you bring it out. Used tissues, diapers, towels, pillows and duvets are not recycling. They go in an official garbage bag.

Empty, rinse and flatten bottles and cans before you hand them over; glass bottles only need a rinse. Spray cans such as hairspray should be emptied completely in an open space first. Wrap broken glass and write a warning on the outside so the crew doesn't get cut.

Leftover cooking oil goes into a bottle labeled "食用油" (cooking oil) and onto the recycling truck, never into the food waste bin. Broken umbrellas, helmets and up to 2 old suitcases don't need an official bag either. Just hand them to the crew.

The DEP website has a recycling sorting chart with illustrated leaflets in Chinese and English. If a housemate can't read Chinese yet, send them the English one.

Do you still separate raw and cooked food waste? One bin since 2026

No. Since 1 Jan 2026, Taipei no longer splits household food waste into a red bin (pig feed) and a blue bin (compost). All of it goes into the blue food waste bin at the back of the garbage truck and ends up as compost. This is because the central government has banned feeding household food waste to pigs. Articles online that tell you to keep raw and cooked scraps apart describe the old rules.

Counts as food waste: leftover rice and dishes, noodles and other wheat-based food, fish, meat and offal, vegetable leaves and roots, fruit peel, coffee grounds, tea leaves, seashells, fruit pits and expired food with its packaging removed. Fallen leaves and cut flowers count too.

Not food waste: coconut and durian husks go in a separate bag to the recycling truck, and chopsticks, spoons, toothpicks, paper napkins and packaging must stay out.

Drain food waste first, then keep it in a small lidded bin or a food container, which is cleaner to empty than a plastic bag. A plastic bag is fine too; once you've emptied it, throw the dirty bag into the garbage truck. Taipei is hot and humid, and food scraps start to smell by the next day, so it's best to take them out the same day. The DEP also has a food waste sorting chart in several languages, English and Japanese among them.

How do you get rid of a mattress, old furniture or a pile of suitcases?

Garbage trucks don't take large items. For those you book a bulky waste pickup (大型廢棄物), which is free but has to be booked in advance.

  1. Book at least one day ahead. Which number to call depends on the 里 (li, the neighborhood unit your address belongs to). The DEP's bulky waste FAQ has booking tables for all 12 districts that list the cleaning squad for each li and the hours it takes bookings, mostly during the day. Rather not call? Log in to the Taipei City online petition system (臺北市陳情系統), choose "垃圾、噪音、汙染及資源回收 → 大型廢棄物清運（派工）" (garbage, noise, pollution and recycling, then bulky waste collection) and apply online. The squad will phone you to fix a time and place.
  2. At the agreed time, move the items to the agreed spot. Most squads ask you not to put things out until after 9 p.m.
  3. A truck collects them the next day. Bulky waste pickups run Monday to Saturday, with none on Sundays.

You can book for mattresses, bed frames, sofas, tables and chairs, cabinets, bicycles, electric fans, TVs, fridges, washing machines and air conditioners. Suitcases count too if you have 3 or more. The service is for ordinary households, not shops or companies. Put out only what you booked, and don't slip an extra bag of garbage onto the pile.

How much is the fine for dumping garbage, and can foreigners be fined?

Yes, foreigners can be fined. These are the amounts the DEP publishes:

Violation Amount in the DEP FAQ at the time of writing (updated September 2026)
Leaving a bag of garbage by the road, or not putting it out as required NT$3,600 for the 1st offense within a year, NT$6,000 from the 2nd
General waste not in an official bag NT$3,600 to NT$6,000
Putting household garbage in a pedestrian litter bin on the street Treated as not putting it out as required: from NT$3,600
Garbage mixed in with food waste NT$1,200 to NT$6,000
Dropping cigarette butts NT$3,600 to NT$6,000

If you're caught while visiting or staying short-term, the DEP can issue a penalty notice and a payment slip on the spot and require you to pay before you leave Taiwan. You can pay through Taipei's smart payment platform (臺北市智慧支付平台) or by ATM transfer, or take the slip to a post office or any of the four big convenience store chains.

The legal basis for these fines is the Waste Disposal Act (廢棄物清理法). An amendment to Article 50 was promulgated on 15 Jul 2026 and raised the maximum fine from NT$6,000 to NT$100,000. What you actually pay still depends on how the DEP decides the case.

Do you still have to chase the garbage truck in a co-living house?

That depends on the building. Some buildings have cleaning staff who collect everyone's garbage and take it to the truck. Then you can either bag your garbage in an official bag yourself and give it to the cleaners, or let them pack everything into large official bags. Both are allowed, as long as every bag that ends up on the truck is an official one. In the DEP's own words, "every bag of garbage must be paid for by the polluter."

At Seal Co-living, garbage bags count as shared supplies and are already covered by the monthly utilities fee of NT$1,000. Ask us at your viewing or when you move in how each house handles garbage, recycling and food waste, and where it all goes. Until you know, please don't leave garbage in the hallway or stairwell. For sharing the kitchen and fridge with housemates, see Getting the hang of co-living for the first time: getting along with housemates, shared spaces, and your first-week checklist.

Garbage isn't the only thing to sort out when you first arrive. For when to get your ARC (Alien Resident Certificate), a phone number and a bank account, see Your first month in Taipei: the order and deadlines for your ARC, phone, bank account and health insurance. To get a feel for monthly spending, see Living in Taipei in 2026: how much does it cost per month?.

FAQ

Can I throw out garbage on a Wednesday or Sunday?

The trucks don't collect on those days. If it can't wait, take it to a drop-off point with set hours, but not every point opens on Wednesdays and Sundays, so check before you go. The garbage still has to be in an official bag. There are also points that take only food waste on those two days.

Do recycling and food waste need official bags too?

No. Only general waste needs an official bag. Sorted recycling and food waste are collected free.

Can I use garbage bags bought in New Taipei City in Taipei?

Yes. Taipei and New Taipei have accepted each other's bags since 1 May 2019, so New Taipei's official garbage bags and dual-use bags can both go on Taipei's garbage trucks.

Will the crew refuse recycling I bring out on the wrong day?

No. As long as it's sorted, the DEP requires the crew to take it, whatever day you bring it out.

I'm leaving Taipei. Can I return garbage bags I haven't used?

If you're moving somewhere outside Taipei and New Taipei, unopened packs can be returned with the original receipt and proof of your move, minus a handling fee. For details, call the DEP's toll-free official garbage bag line, 0800-064-088, during office hours (8 a.m. to 6 p.m.).

Sources

(All accessed on 9 October 2026)

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