From 1985 to 2002, our country promoted the “First, Second, and Third Garbage Disposal Plans”, during which local governments were subsidized to build, expand, and improve sanitary landfills to properly handle household garbage. Promoted comprehensively in the 1990s were policies such as "incineration as the main and landfill as a supplement", the "Review and Prospects of Garbage Disposal Plan" in 2003, and the "zero-waste" garbage reduction and resource recycling. All of them advocated the effective recycling of resources so as to gradually reach the goal of full recycling and zero waste of garbage. It was also stipulated that after 2007, except for remote areas, domestic garbage would not enter landfills, so that the amount of garbage entering the landfills would be greatly reduced, and the landfills would be gradually transformed into the final disposal sites for incinerated ash
and non-combustible waste, as well as environmental protection facilities for temporary storage of general waste during major natural disasters and incinerator maintenance.
To assist in improving the effectiveness of operation and management of landfills across the country, the Environmental Protection Administration,Executive Yuan (MOENV) has since 2013 asked the Environmental Inspection Corps to conduct comprehensive audits on the operating
landfills and has since 2014 increased the implementation of the three-tier inspection work on those MOENV-subsidized local waste transfer stations and spot checks on the management and maintenance of storage facilities in coastal (river) public landfills; the three-tier inspection system is implemented to realize the responsibility of hierarchical management, to audit and to supervise the improvement of the management and operation efficiency of landfills and transfer stations and maintain the quality of environmental facilities. For coastal (river) public landfills, local governments are required to monitor and track them on their own, while this MOENV conducts random inspections from time to time so as to jointly do a good job on monitoring and controlling.
According to Article 5 of the Waste Disposal Act: the recycling, cleaning, and disposal of general waste shall be carried out by the environmental protection bureau of a special municipality government, the environmental protection bureau of a county or city government and the public office of a rural township, urban township or city. When necessary, the county may entrust the rural township (urban township or city) office to carry out disposal work. Therefore, the final disposal facility for general waste-landfills is operated and managed by the environmental protection bureau in special municipalities/provincial cities, while landfills in counties are mostly managed by the county environmental protection bureau on behalf of the township office where the landfill is located.
In order to improve the operational management efficiency of landfills nationwide, this MOENV has been conducting comprehensive audits on the operating public landfills since 2013, implementing a three-tier inspection system to realize the responsibility of hierarchical management, auditing and supervising the improvement of management and operation efficiency of landfills and transfer stations, and ensuring the quality of environmental facilities.