How many citizens are aware that from 2026, waste (everyday waste disposed of in the white trash bags)  from the metropolitan area will no longer be placed in landfills? What about the fact that about 5,000 tons of trash are buried in the ground every day, and that 600 tons of trash are burned every day in each of Seoul’s five resource recovery facilities (garbage incinerators)? As you throw away trash every day, have you ever tried to track it or think about where it goes?

 

Although I realize the seriousness of the climate crisis that is now just around the corner, I often think about the waste I produce as ‘something that can’t be helped.’ It’s said that humans can’t live without producing waste.

 

Still, I’ve been thinking that I should at least know where the trash goes and how it gets there, and that this would be the bare minimum for us, the creatures who generate the most trash among all the life that shares our planet. Then I happened to hear about the “Trash Tour.” Hosted jointly by Sudokwon Landfill Management Corporation and Almang Store, a zero-waste shop and refill station, its itinerary includes stops at the Mapo Resource Recovery Facility, Sudokwon Landfill, a recycling sorting plant, and even Almang Store and Gomson Repair Shop.

 

So, at 9:40 A.M. on March 14, a little over thirty citizens who had gathered at Hapjeong Station in Seoul began to chase trash.

 

▲ The Mapo Resource Recovery Facility. Trash that has been brought in through the loading gate is broken up somewhat by a crane (left), before being put into a waste crusher (right). ©Ilda

If we reduce waste, we won’t need more incineration plants

 

The first place we went to was the Mapo Resource Recovery Facility, located in Mapo-gu, Seoul. Currently, the waste we throw away is disposed of in three ways: recycling, incineration, and landfills. ‘Resource recovery facilities’ are where incineration is done. The Mapo one has been in operation since May 2005, and is one of five resource recovery facilities in Seoul (the others’ locations are Yangcheon, Nowon, Gangnam, and Eunpyeong). It processes municipal waste from Jongno-gu, Jung-gu, Yongsan-gu, Seodaemun-gu, and Mapo-gu. It’s designed to incinerate 250 tons three times a day, for a total of 750 tons, but currently, because the facility is a bit old, it incinerates 200 tons three times a day, for a total of 600 tons of waste.

 

When combustible everyday waste in white trash bags is brought in by truck after early-morning collection, the waste is first moved through the loading gate that’s equipped with facilities to prevent the odor from escaping. Afterwards, a crane lifts the waste more than 30 meters into the air and throws it down into the incineration area. This is sealed so that the waste will burn well. The waste is then placed in a bunker and then the incinerator, where it is burned at a temperature of over 800 degrees Celsius. Of course, the smoke generated during incineration is not discharged as-is; the presence of harmful gases is first minimized through a multi. There’s a system at the top of the incinerator chimney that measures pollutants in real time, and this information is available on the facility’s website. The heat energy generated during this process is sold as electricity. The leftover ash can also be used to make bricks, but this is not currently being done.

 

The fact that the waste incineration process includes several safety steps was impressive and reassuring. Go Geum-sook, CEO of Almang Store, who oversaw the tour, argued, “This kind of incineration facility should [continue to] be located close to people.” This is “so that the incineration process can be safe and the data can continue to be disclosed, whereas if the facility is moved far away (to a place with few people), the waste’s travel path will be longer and management may be less strict.”

 

Additionally, Ms. Go pointed out, “The air going out of the facility is safe, but the air inside the facility is bad. There’s been research showing that this affects the health of workers.” She added, “We need to be concerned not just about the health of nearby residents, but also about how to protect the health of the workers who are here for eight or more hours a day.”

 

The Seoul Metropolitan Government announced plans to close the Mapo Resource Recovery Facility in 2035 and build a new underground facility [in the same neighborhood] by 2030 that can handle 1,000 tons per day, drawing opposition from Mapo-gu residents. This [proposal to build a new facility] is not only because the current facilities are getting older, but also because direct landfilling of waste in the metropolitan area will be banned from 2026, so the area needs a place that can incinerate the waste currently being landfilled.

 

Ms. Go said that we need to think about how to reduce waste, not where to build facilities: “If the thousand tons of waste aren’t generated in the first place, won’t there be no need to build new facilities?” If each of the 10 million citizens of the metropolitan area reduces waste by just 100 grams (for reference, a package of ramen is 85 grams), that adds up to a thousand tons.

 

In addition, she said, “One way to reduce incinerated waste is through a municipal waste pretreatment facility (a place where trash bags are torn open and basic recyclable materials are automatically sorted out before the waste is landfilled),” and emphasized, “More than anything, it is important to sort [recyclable] waste well.”

 

Regarding creating an incineration facility underground, Ms. Go pointed out, “It may look good from the outside, but the environment inside the facility is bound to be bad. Also, clearing trash out of our sight is not a way to reduce trash.”

 

▲ The Sudokwon Landfill, located in Incheon. We are standing on its second section, which is now closed up, and looking at the third section. ©Ilda

At the landfill that holds the capital’s waste

 

We next went to the Sudokwon Landfill Management Corporation, located in Incheon. The Sudokwon [sudokwon means “capital area”] Landfill has a total area of ​​about 16 million square meters, which is about five and a half times the size of Yeouido in Seoul. It was established as a landfill in 1992, and household and business waste comes to it from 64 of the 66 cities, counties, and metropolitan districts that make up the capital area, which comprises the city of Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. Currently, two of the landfill’s sections have been filled and sealed, while the third section is still in use. The first section has now been transformed into the Dream Park sports center, golf course, and wildflower complex. The use plan for the second landfill is still being discussed, but it’s said that it’s highly likely to turned into a solar power complex.

 

Each section consists of eight tiers that are five meters tall each, so the space is 40 meters deep in total. Within each tier, 4.5 meters are filled with trash and the last 0.5 meters with soil. After the waste is landfilled and begins rotting and decomposing, leachate is generated below the ground and landfill gas is generated above the ground. A leachate treatment plant is set up to treat this in an eco-friendly way, and the landfill gas is collected and transported to a power generation facility. The leachate goes through biological and chemical treatment processes to finally become ‘treated water,’ which is reused as cooling water for power generation, or water for landscaping, cleaning, etc. The biogas generated during the treatment processes is also used for energy.

 

▲ Yangmyo Greenhouse, where plants are grown with biogas produced in the process of treating leachate and wastewater. If you visit the Sudokwon Landfill Management Corporation, you can adopt one of the plants and bring it home as a souvenir. ©Ilda

Until 2021, approximately 12,000 tons of waste entered the landfill per day. After the policy was changed to require metal and glass to be removed from construction waste before disposal, approximately 5,500 tons of waste have been coming in. From 2026, placing waste in the landfill will be prohibited; only the ashes of incinerated waste will be allowed in.

 

Remember: there are people at recycling sorting stations

 

Our next stop was a privately-owned recycling sorting station in Incheon. Unlike the Mapo Resource Recovery Facility and the Sudokwon Landfill, which are run by government bodies, the environment here was not great. The station handles unseparated recycling waste from single-family homes and multi-family villa [small apartment buildings].

 

Emptying one of the bags in the pile of recyclable trash, a worker mentioned that the condition of the recyclables was not good: “It’s better than before, but people still tend to leave food residue in their recyclables.” She also emphasized that “as long as you throw away the recyclable waste cleanly, 70% of what you throw away can be recycled.”

 

▲ The pile of recyclable trash at a privately-owned recycling sorting station in Incheon. A worker picked up and showed us a glass bottle with food residues still in it, and emphasized the importance of cleaning. ©Ilda

Because this recycling sorting station does not serve places where the recyclables are pre-sorted, such as apateu [large apartment complexes], its workers ultimately go through the process of sorting each item individually. They also need to remove any paper, tape, and twine stuck to Styrofoam boxes, but they often can’t do this. As a result, the materials produced through the recycling process have impurities and are not considered good-quality materials.

 

The worker who explained the recyclable waste piled up throughout the sorting facility and how it can be utilized said that citizen effort and participation are most crucial to increasing the recycling rate. She repeated, “You don’t need to do much. Please rinse your [recyclable] trash with water at least once before you dispose of it.” If foreign matter such as food waste remains, the recyclable trash has to be washed several times, chemical products have to be used, and it has to be sorted out individually, and all of this extra work increases the costs of recycling.

 

We noticed migrant workers at the recycling sorting station. Go Geum-sook, CEO of Almang Store, said, “If you throw away food along with the recycling waste, it causes not only bad odors but also problems such as mold. It’s a bit better at this time of year, but in the summer it’s hard to do this work. When disposing of trash, we have to be conscious of the human rights and labor rights of working people.”

 

She also urged paying attention to the process by which waste is moved and disposed of, saying, “It actually costs a lot of taxes and money to dispose of waste, but citizens don’t seem to realize that.”

 

 

▲ The interior of Almang Store, a zero-waste store and refill station located in Mapo-gu, Seoul that accepts less-commonly-recycled materials like plastic bottle caps and milk cartons. (For details, visit https://almang.net/recycle) ©Ilda

Reuse it, repair it, refill it!

 

The last stops of the tour were Almang Store and Gomson Repair Shop, both located in Mapo-gu, Seoul. Almaeng Store is the first refill station in Korea, and it was opened in June 2020 by CEO Go Geum-sook and other citizens who wanted to reduce waste, use fewer disposable products, and shop with reusable containers. Whether you want to buy detergent, cosmetics, or snacks at Almang Store, you must bring your own container. Customers place the products they want to purchase in containers, weigh them, and pay the price accordingly. In addition, you can also purchase items made from recycled products or eco-friendly items that can be used repeatedly for a long time. Almang Store has inspired other zero-waste shops and refill stations throughout the country.

 

In February of this year, Gomson Repair Shop opened near Almang Store. With a belief in the “right to repair”, the shop teaches techniques for clothing repair, umbrella repair, iPhone screen repair, and pottery restoration, and shares various tools. It’s built on the dream of a space where people can not just reduce the waste generated through a lifestyle of buying new products, discarding them, and buying them again, but also pick up a variety of repair skills.

 

At the end of the tour, Ms. Go said, “Of course, systems and policies are important in reducing waste and protecting the environment, but civic awareness and culture are crucial, too.”

 

▲ A sign posted in Gomson Repair shop (Instagram: @gomson_repair). It reads: “We oppose the culture of single-use products that are used once and thrown away, and make a culture of using things carefully for as long as possible and taking care of each other. #becausetheearthisnotsingleuse #becausewearenotsingleuse We value old items and continue relationships that have been built over time. We share daily life skills in order to make the 1.5-degree lifestyle that can overcome the climate crisis more enjoyable, closer to us, and more urgent.” ©Ilda

How can we reduce waste? What kind of waste will we dispose of and how? On the Trash Tour, I chased after the trash I’d thrown away and realized that I needed to try harder to reduce trash. I also learned that trash can be transformed. But you can't achieve that kind of change if you just get rid of it. [Translated by Marilyn Hook] 

 

Published Mar. 20, 2024 *Original article: http://ildaro.com/9864

 

◆ To see more English-language articles from Ilda, visit our English blog(https://ildaro.blogspot.com).

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