Recycling in South Korea
[4] The government of South Korea provided data regarding a large decline in the amount of waste generated in a day by households from 1.3kg in 1994 to 0.94kg in 2013.
However, Repaper, a venture company in South Korea, developed and marketed recyclable coated cups by using the component of acrylate instead of PE.
Food waste in South Korea has a higher moisture content than in other countries due to the nature of national cuisine; this presents serious threats to groundwater and soil contamination in landfill.
It is passed to a screw press then dryer, composter, curing facility, and finally moved to storage or turned into fertilizer.
[9] The Law for Promotion of Resources Saving and Reutilization (LRSR) was enacted in 1992 by the recycling management of South Korea.
The PDR system ran from 1992 to 2002, and was meant to increase the economic responsibility of manufacturers to promote e-waste recycling.
[10] The South Korean government enacted laws in 2003 wherein consumer electronics manufacturers were made fully responsible for the recycling of end-of-life (EOL) goods.
Lastly, a third method exists wherein manufacturers can join the Producer Responsibility Organization (PRO), which in turn completes the recycling process for them.
A 2 year trial period was set to initiate the PR system in June 2000 by the MOE; 3 large companies chose to join the project voluntarily: Samsung, Daewoo and LG.
During the trial producers were ordered to build recycling facilities in lieu of making monetary contributions.
The report stated that from collected waste home appliances 12% of them were reused, 69% were recycled and 19% were taken into incineration and landfill.
[12] China was the largest reusable items importer in the world until it stopped buying plastic waste from 2018.
Due to its value, the 48 recycling businesses present in South Korea stopped collecting plastic waste, causing it to be piled up.
The Ministry of Environment would prohibit the production of colored plastic bottles in 2020, given their higher recycling cost.
The government has also discussed the possibility of banning unnecessary packaging, as well as goods that contain materials such as polyvinyl chloride.
[13] Moreover, a regulation to collect colorless transparent PET bottles separately from other plastic recycling materials.
[14] Since 2015, the local Seoul government introduced a new prohibition of paper and/or plastic in common garbage bags.
