A city in northern Taiwan is trying the Midas touch to persuade reluctant residents to clean up after their canines: offering a chance to win gold bars to anyone handing in bags of doggy deposits.
Dog owners and other residents of New Taipei City, bordering the capital Taipei, can hand in waste to government cleaning teams in exchange for tickets into a lucky draw.
The prizes are three gold ingots worth TW$60,000 (US$2,100), TW$18,000 and TW$12,000.
The number of tickets per person is unlimited and the winners will be named in October, the city government said in a statement.
The city said that it hopes the event will attract a lot of participants - especially as the price of gold is rising.
However, dog owner Chen Shu-mei does not agree.
"I don't think so. People are lazy. They are not even willing to do a small thing as to pick it up, how will they take it to the borough office in exchange for a prize," said the owner of four dogs.
Others, such as Chen Mei-ching, said she is only comfortable cleaning up after her own dog.
"Personally, I don't think I will pick up other people's waste, plus we don't have the tools, but with this policy maybe other people will do it," said Chen.
The city will give free garbage bags to would-be collectors. It is also beefing up more conventional measures; they will reward people for photographing dog owners leaving mess uncleaned and step up their own poo-patrols in dog haunts.
New Taipei City's Wu-Chuan Borough Magistrate Yu Chin-cheng, who has organised a team of volunteers to help clean up the city's dog droppings twice a day, hopes the measure will encourage people's spirit of community.
The city government will be hoping for better results than the central city of Taichung saw in 2009, when its offer of TW$100 of shopping vouchers for each kilogram of excrement collected yielded little more than criticism and ridicule.
3 News / Reuters
source: newshub archive
