Part of the reason this works is because households in Taiwan are much more likely to be multi-generational - there's usually someone home in the evening to take the trash out at the scheduled time. In higher end apartment or condo complexes with more people living alone, there may be a maintenance fee to use a dumpster.
Taking out the trash is also a vaguely social activity (at least among the elderly people in my area) you inevitably run into your neighbors all at the same time in a way that's very uncommon in the US sans for perhaps block parties.
I counter that it doesn't work for a lot of other people, particularly the young and single. Pickup times are during working hours or social hours. There are seriously people who excused themselves from social functions because their rubbish is collected at 7:30 pm.
Recycling is only collected twice a week. Oh, you want to study Chinese? Sorry, the class is the same time as your rubbish collection. Or you've got to be home on Saturday. There is nowhere available to take rubbish and just leave it there.
It causes arguments between housemates. When my girlfriend complained "Why did you put the used bendon box/bubble tea cup/etc in the regular rubbish?" and I suggested that it was my housemate, it started a terrible argument. When she caught my CouchSurfing guests not using soap to wash the oil out of a tin of tuna, she wouldn't talk to me for 3 days and refused to let me have guests again.
If you want to throw away broken glass, and put the pieces inside a cereal box for safety, the rubbish collectors will yell at you for throwing it in non-recycling. The only real solution is to throw everything into the regular truck, run away fast, and never admit it to your girlfriend.
I think you have two problems here that are in your control.
>When she caught my CouchSurfing guests not using soap to wash the oil out of a tin of tuna, she wouldn't talk to me for 3 days and refused to let me have guests again
You should consider getting a different girlfriend. Someone who blows up, and more importantly, refuses to talk to you because of something like this is not worth the effort.
>If you want to throw away broken glass, and put the pieces inside a cereal box for safety, the rubbish collectors will yell at you for throwing it in non-recycling
Another solution is to care less about the judgment of people who don't understand your circumstances or intentions.
Can't speak for OP's girlfriend, but depending on your city's recycling system, oily tuna cans in the recycling can cause a problem.
If your city is singlestream, then your oily can will co-mingle with paper products, which can then contaminate the paper products - our systems cannot recycle oily paper, and relies on sorting to remove them from the recycling stream at processing sites.
Also more personally, depending on your recycling/garbage storage conditions, keeping around food residue may cause unpleasant odours or critters.
I used to have arguments. Then I read this book and gained the ability to resolve arguments quickly and prevent them from happening. I wish I had read it 20 years ago.
This is one of the small handful of books that changed my life. I think everyone will be happier and have better relationships and social interactions if they follow this book.
Not going to be popular here but this sort of behavior is a form of abuse. You must conform to an externally defined standard of virtue, or face consequences ...
Part of the reason this works is because households in Taiwan are much more likely to be multi-generational - there's usually someone home in the evening to take the trash out at the scheduled time. In higher end apartment or condo complexes with more people living alone, there may be a maintenance fee to use a dumpster.
Taking out the trash is also a vaguely social activity (at least among the elderly people in my area) you inevitably run into your neighbors all at the same time in a way that's very uncommon in the US sans for perhaps block parties.