I kicked off this year’s environment coverage with a piece on carbon-footprint labeling, which is something just a handful of Taiwanese companies have embraced, in part because it’s troublesome and involves some expense. Because the Lunar New Year was fast approaching, I then explored options for consumers who’d rather donate unwanted items or pass them along to people likely to use them, instead of consigning them to the trash incinerator.

Early in the Year of the Dragon, I interviewed an inspiring Taipei-based scholar for some local perspectives on the four-day work week movement, which last year unsuccessfully petitioned the government to consider shortening the working week. In March, I returned to the complex and often frustration reality of renewable energy in Taiwan, and explained why the country isn’t likely to make rapid progress in reducing the amount of coal it burns.

For the three articles that followed, I focused on what’s happening in the countryside. The problem of free-roaming dogs (which kill birds, muntjacs, and endangered leopard cats) has, if anything, got worse in the last few years. A two-parter on the ongoing loss of farmland and green spaces questioned the government’s approach to unlicensed factories, but at least I could tell an optimistic story from one corner of Yilan County, where a rice farmer asked for and was given public support in her effort to hold back the tide of development.