<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/20/south-korea-zero-food-waste-composting-system>
"Every few months or so, 69-year-old Seoul resident Hwang Ae-soon stops by a
local convenience store to buy a 10-piece bundle of special yellow plastic
bags.
Since 2013, under South Korea’s mandatory composting scheme, residents have
been required to use these bags to throw out their uneaten food. Printed with
the words “designated food waste bag”, a single 3-liter bag costs 300 won
(about 20 cents) apiece. In Hwang’s district of Geumcheon-gu, curbside pickup
is every day except Saturday. All she has to do is squeeze out any moisture and
place the bag by the street in a special bin after sunset.
“We’re just two people – my husband and myself,” said Hwang. “We throw out one
bag or so every week.” Hwang, an urban farmer who also composts some of her
food waste herself (things like fruit peels or vegetable scraps) guesses that
this is probably on the lower end of the spectrum. “We’re part of a generation
from a far more frugal time,” she explained. “Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the
country was so poor that very little food actually went to waste. We ate
everything we had.”
Things changed as urbanization intensified in the following decades, bringing
with it industrialized food systems and new scales of waste. Beginning in the
late 1990s, as landfills in the crowded capital area approached their limits,
South Korea implemented a slate of policies to ease what was becoming seen as a
trash crisis. The government banned burying organic waste in landfills in 2005,
followed by another ban against dumping leachate – the putrid liquid squeezed
from solid food waste – into the ocean in 2013. Universal curbside composting
was implemented that same year, requiring everyone to separate their food from
general waste.
Hwang’s yellow bag will be hauled off to a processing plant along with
thousands of others, where the plastic will be stripped off and its contents
recycled into biogas, animal feed or fertilizer. Some municipalities have
introduced automated food waste collectors in apartment complexes, which allow
residents to forgo the bags and swipe a card to pay the weight-based fee at the
machine directly. As far as the numbers go, the results of this system have
been remarkable. In 1996, South Korea recycled just 2.6% of its food waste.
Today, South Korea recycles close to 100% annually."
Via
Future Crunch issue 192:
https://futurecrunch.com/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
