Zero Food Waste Across the Nation: Achieved!

South Korea adopted a mandatory composting scheme almost ten years ago. Today, food waste is virtually inexistent thanks to an easy-to-use and accessible pickup system doubled with policies to curb waste at the source.

“South Korea’s waste system, especially in terms of frequency of collection, is incredibly convenient compared to other countries,” says Hong Su-yeol, a waste expert and director of Resource Recycling Consulting. “Some of my peers working at non-profits overseas say that disposal should be a little bit inconvenient if you want to discourage waste, but I disagree: I think that it should be made as easy as possible as long as it goes hand-in-hand with other policies that attack the problem of reducing waste itself.”

In 2005, the government banned burying organic waste in landfills. In 2013, it also banned leachate, the putrid liquid squeezed from solid food waste, being dumped in the ocean. The same year, it implanted the curbside pickup of uneaten food. The 3-liter “designated food waste bags” are placed in a unique bin by the street after sunset and picked up every day – except on Saturday. Bags’ content is recycled into biogas, animal feed, or fertilizer. In 1996, only 2.6% of food waste was recycled in South Korea, and today, that share is close to 100% because of the effective and easy-to-use solution the government implanted.