Kyungsun Lee: Waste Management in South Korea
In 2002, South Korea and Japan held the FIFA World Cup together. Some friends who love soccer
might remember that. This picture is the Seoul World Cup Stadium, with the main stadium in Korea. As
you can see, the stadium is surrounded by green and has huge parks near there. Since 2002, this area is a
favorite place for family, friends and couples in Seoul to enjoy their leisure time. However, this area has a
secret you can’t see in this picture.
Actually, this area was a landfill. It was a picture of same area just ten years before of 2002 World
cup. The mountains covered by green consisted of waste from Seoul. The residents suffered air and water
pollution and bad smells. The road to this area was always crowded by garbage trucks. Also, the fire by
methane gas was one of the serious problems in the area. This area, called Nanjido, was used as landfill
from 1978 to 1993. In these 15 years, the 92 million tones of waste were buried in 2.72-million m3 area.
This landfill was a dark side of rapid economic growth of Korea. Along with the economic growth, the
lifestyle was changed and the waste was also changed. New kinds of waste such as plastics or disposable
product were shipped to the landfill without any preparation.
However, after the close of landfill in 1993, the municipal government tried to change this landfill
into environmental friendly area. And finally, they were successful in developing the park to give it back
to the citizens. I think this impressive case showed one aspect of waste management in Korea.
Korea is a country that generates waste less than others. This graph is the municipal waste
generation intensities per capita in 2011 by OCED Environmental Statistics. You can see that Korea
generates less municipal waste than other countries but has higher rate of household waste.
Regarding the waste treatment, Korea has a high portion of material recovery including recycling
and composting compared with other countries in 2011. Even though Korea looks good at municipal
waste management now, but it was not so 20 years ago. Remember the picture of landfill you saw.
This graph shows the trends of municipal waste generated in Korea from 1990 to 2012. In 1991,
the total waste generated in Korea was 33,670 thousand tons. However, it decreased to 17,881 thousand
tons in 2012. Almost 50% of waste in 1991 was decreased. Especially, the waste generated dramatically
decreased during the 1990s. What happened in Korea? The trend of recycling rate in Korea is also
interesting. While only 5% of total waste was recycled in Korea, around 60% of total waste was recycled
in 2000s. How was this dramatic change possible? Who has a responsibility to take care of the waste?
Our society consists of different levels. Individuals make family. Individuals and families are also
members of a community. Community is a part of municipality. And Municipality constitutes the nation.
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In this level society, everyone should be take care of the waste. However, their motivation, actions and
results are different. Let’s look at closely the waste management in Korea at different levels.
As a student of environmental studies, I am very interested in the pollution and climate change at
national level and understand the ways waste management contributes to solutions. Also, the landfill
issues were an issue in my local area. I lived in Incheon few years ago near the landfill in Incheon's Seo
District. This landfill handles waste from the metropolitan area. An average of 16,500 tons of waste is
transported from Seoul, the capital city of South Korea. It was around 44% of total waste while only 17%
waste from Incheon. Even though I lived far from there, the residence near the landfill suffered from
airborne dust on the road. The landfill was expected to fill to capacity by the end of 2016, but it can be
used for many more years because total amount of waste was reduced. As the Seoul Metropolitan
Government wants to use the landfill through 2044, there is a big conflict between the Seoul and Incheon
Government. I witnessed the pollution caused by the landfill and the conflict over the local government.
This is one of the reasons why I am interested in the waste management problem. Like me, there are
some young people who are aware the environmental problem and try to reduce the waste. That
awareness is closely related with the environmental education in school and at home. Since I was in
elementary school, I learned how to separate the waste and why. Also, the home is an important place to
reduce waste. I will discuss how the household level do reduce, reuse and recycle the waste.
Individuals who has no interest in environmental issues also participated in the recycling for
economic reasons. We use a volume-based waste fee system since 1995. Before that, citizens paid a fixed
rate for waste treatment regardless of the volume of waste. The Volume-based Waste Fee System follows
the "producer-pays" principle requiring users to pay the waste based on the quantity of waste they
produce. It changed the behavior of people to reduce waste for economic reasons. Most families tried to
reduce the waste because of the volume-based fee system. They can save their costs for living by reducing
waste through recycling. It was same in my family.
When I was participated in a workshop, we discussed about the environmental leaders who
influenced me. For me, the environmental leader who influenced me was my mother. My mother loves
nature and always tried to save energy and resources in everyday life. She always talked about “Akkabda”
which is the same word as “Mottainai” in Japanese about water, energy, and waste. Actually saving is a
habit for my parent’s generation. She was born just after the end of Korean War and raised in rural area.
While the Korean economy was growing fast, the family economy was growing slowly. Throughout their
whole life, they are saving the resource for family economy. Because of that, it is common in Korean
families to reduce and reuse the waste since early times.
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For this presentation, I interviewed my mother on why she does recycling. She gave me an
interesting answer besides the environmental and economic reasons. She said the separation collection is
cleaner than dumping the waste. For example, she washed the juice bottle when it generated as waste
and throw it in the recycling station in my community when she is going out. Compared with the dumping
the juice bottle, it would not smell bad and not attract flies. The individual level and household level
practice not only recycling but also reducing and reusing in their everyday life. It is not only for
environmental reasons, but also economic and sanitary reasons at home.
How about higher levels of society? I would like to discuss about the waste management issues at
community level. In this presentation, I define the community as a social group whose members share
common characteristics or interests such as locality, religious, occupational and interests.
I would like to introduce the “ANABADA movement” which encouraged reuse of unnecessary
things in their community. Before this movement, people usually reuse unnecessary things within family
or close friends. For example, my mother gave my skirts to my cousin as I grew. However, she gave it to
neighbors after this movement. In 1997, there were serious financial crisis in Korea. Many companies
were closed and people were discharged. Not only national economy but also family economy had a hard
time. In this background, the ANABADA movement was generated. The Anabada movement means
"Saving, Sharing, Exchanging, and Reusing." There were lots of flea market held in community and people
sharing and exchanging their unnecessary things. This movement was affected on people’s behaviors and
community in reducing and reusing resources in the community level.
In Korea, food waste was a serious problem. As of the forbidding law of direct landfill of food
waste in 2005, people should be reduce and recycle the food waste. At that time, the government focused
on reducing food waste in the community. In Korea, there are many facilities providing food in schools,
companies and militaries. The facilities apply several methods to reduce waste by managing supply and
demand. They conducted a campaign for not making left over to the customers. They suggest to the
people take only as much as they can eat. Also, some facilities did the competitions to reduce leftovers
among classes, units or departments. It was very active campaign in the early 2000s.
While the Anabada movements and reducing food waste was popular in the past, the upcycling is a
more trendy issue. Upcycling means the process of transforming waste into new materials or products of
better quality or for better environmental value. In these days, those upcycling items are popular in
young people as a fashion and interior items.
When you googled "recycling Korea," you can find out some questions like "do you know how to
throw out the waste in Korea." As we have a very complicated recycling system, it is strange for
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foreigners. This recycling system was taken responsibilities by the municipal government. Based on the
national law, the municipal government has their own waste management system.
So, how complicated is the system? Let's take an example of Seoul. Seoul ask citizens to separate
waste by type such as paper, glass, metal, Styrofoam, plastic, milk cartons, fluorescent lamps, plastic bags
and batteries in everyday life. Recently, they launched a food waste-recycling program. Those systems
were quite effective. While only 23.7% of municipal was recycled in 1995, the recycling rate increased to
60.5% and landfill rate decrease to 17.9% in 2010. This recycling system contributes to reduce the waste.
In addition, those recycling program brought some environmental and economic benefits. For example,
the total of 69,213 tons of plastics were recycled in Korea by yielding an economic benefit of 64 million
USD. In addition, it is estimated 23,532 tons of greenhouse gases (CO2) emissions were prevented. In
addition, the municipal government takes charge of not only household waste but also industrial and
construction waste.
The national government focuses waste management law and regulation on. For example, they
launched the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system in 2003. It requires manufactures and
importers to recycle a certain amount of their products. Based on the law, the government achieved
saving on landfill expenses of 2,888 billion KRW and selling recycled goods and materials for 3,055
billion KRW. Also, this law created 9,769 jobs in Korea. Also, the government encourages using recycled
products by providing certificate for green product and supports green procurement. The government
covers a broader level of waste management compared with other levels of society. Also, the government
is facilitating between the business and citizen regarding the waste management.
Our societies consist of different levels from individual to national level. Each level has a different
reason for dedicating to waste management and different roles in waste management. Recently, I read a
book about community development. One impressive phrase was that there is work that one person, ten
people, hundred people and thousand people can do. I think it is same in the waste management problem.
There are different activities in different level and it connected very closely each other. I think the case of
Korea shows that well.
One reason people do not recycle is that they don’t believe recycling makes a difference. They
don’t understand what the meaning is in their recycling behavior. They might think that the recycling is
inconvenient and hard to do. However, I believe this small behavior has a meaning and makes an impact
on our community, local area, nation and earth. As the case of Korea shows, the small changes of people
to recycle makes a big difference such as solving the landfill problems, reducing carbon dioxide emission
and create a new environmental business. We are very small country in the world, but I hope this
experience will be a big change in our earth.
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