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Could this level of tech-assisted waste consciousness work elsewhere?
With Western countries still trying to convince citizens that ‘ugly’ produce is still perfectly edible, it seems amazing that in some countries, it is a normalized to keep track of the waste that you produce. With food waste deemed a serious problem in South Korea, municipal authorities have been using RFID technology to track who’s disposing of what—and now they’re going to make sloppy garbage sorters pay per pound, too.
In order to access the residential bins where waste is stored, Seoul residents must swipe an RFID-implanted card that establishes what individual is throwing out the waste (in the past, entire apartment buildings were tracked instead). The capacity of different garbage bags (for example, a 10-liter bag costs about 190 won, or $1) also encourages sorting. This initiative has reduced household food waste by 30% and restaurant food waste by 40%, and the diversion of food waste to landfills is now down to 3-5%.
South Korea began examining its food waste problem after the 2013 London Convention, when it moved to ban dumping food and wastewater into the ocean. It discovered that its waste has a particularly high liquid content, about 80%, which was leaching into soil and causing outbreaks of insects. Now South Korea hopes to counteract this problem by processing food waste so that it can be used as animal feed and fertilizer.
How has South Korea, in particular, managed to implement and enforce this policy without causing residents to fly into a blind rage as they probably would in the U.S.? The answer lies in differences in tradition and culture. In an interview with Buddhist monk Jong Mi Li, filmmaker Karim Chrobog discovered that the Buddhist principles of living simply and thinking of the less fortunate are highly compatible with this waste-conscious ethos. And it’s compatible with business: restaurants have been able to get around paying for waste by donating more food to the hungry.
And as Seok-Gil Le of the Korea Food Recycling Association points out, it was inadvisable for most citizens to waste food when Korea was a poor country—which was as recent as the 1980’s, when the per capita income was $5,547 (by 2013, it had jumped to $27,990). Being parsimonious about waste, therefore, is built in to the country’s living memory, and many people remember eating even the spoiled rice.
Korea has the most strict food waste policies in the world. Perhaps the West could begin to match this level of dedication by providing positive incentives, such as tax deductions, rather than just financial penalties for failing to sort out trash.
Image of trash pile in Seoul and hill in Seoul by Sasha Friedman, recycling bins at Busan by ProjectManhattan, Landfill Image by Ashley Felton
