Nerdy Science Blog

Taipei’s city council had cooperated with researhers to develop ‘anti-pasting coating’ in order to counter the problem of random pasting of illegal advertisements. Mayor Lu Jia Chen said that the new coating is inexpensive and its durability can be up to half a year. The whole city will be using this new product start from this year.

As the council indicated, illegal pasting of advertisements can be seen everywhere, including fire extinguishers, telephone poles, lampposts, and walls. The cleaning party used to tear down 250 kgs spam papers in a day. The glue behind the advertisements also vastly damage the city image.

In order to eliminate the illegal advertisements, the newly developed coating is able to prevent advertisements stick on the pole surface. Even if the advertisements are glued onto the pole, they can be easily removed and won’t left any trace of glue.

Mr. Lu also said that the cost to hire specialists to remove the advertisements will cost government 4.5 million Taiwan dollar per year. The anti-pasting coating, which main ingredient is resin, costs only six to seven thousand per barrel, and each barrel can be used to coat 500 poles. Each coating can last for half year. The estimated price for the coating of all the lampposts in Taipei won’t cost more than 500 thousand Taiwan dollar per year, which means the council is able to save 4 million Taiwan dollar per year.

Besides coating with anti-pasting coating and hire people to clean the advertisements, the council also encourages citizens to clean the advertisements. The council used the exchange of daily products to encourage housewives become the super cleaners. This not only reduce the amoung of illegal advertisements, but also reduce the cost of manpower.

(news1 news2)