This case study covers the Saenuri government from 2012.
Summary
Producing the food we eat has a massive impact on the planet. Our global food systems account for up to a third of our greenhouse gas emissions, and agriculture is the single biggest global driver of biodiversity loss. There are many initiatives designed to reduce the impact of these food systems at the production level, from soil testing and anti-desertification measures, to producing fertiliser without fossil fuels, or to gene-editing crops to be more resilient to climate change and therefore more efficient. But while these interventions target production, another way to reduce the carbon footprint of the food we eat is to waste less of it. If food waste were a country, it would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
The Republic of Korea (often known as South Korea) used to have a large problem with where its food waste ended up: in 1992, almost all of its food waste was dumped into landfills. This practice was outlawed in 2005, but Korea still lacked the infrastructure to deal with this level of food waste properly. In 2013, a mandatory compost law was brought in by the conservative-majority parliament, rolling out a ‘pay-as-you-throw’ system across the country which charged people for how much food waste they produced. Now the level of recycling for food waste, whether that is compost, animal feed or biogas, is nearly 100%.
The food waste problem
Globally, an estimated third of all food that is produced is wasted. This includes food grown in farms that never gets picked, food that spoils before it reaches shops, food that is not sold and is then dumped, and food thrown away in households. If it were a country, food waste would be the third biggest global emitter of carbon, after only China and the USA.
Sometimes food waste is unavoidable, particularly in developing countries where food often spoils due to a lack of adequate infrastructure. But much food is wasted in large quantities at the household or restaurant level.
When food waste goes into landfills or dumps, it has a much bigger impact than if the food is composted. Food cannot be used for compost once dumped as it becomes contaminated by toxic materials within the dump. But it also does not decompose in the same way.
When waste in dumps and landfills is compacted it has to break down without any oxygen. This means that instead of organic waste turning into compost, which retains its nutrients, it is composted anaerobically which means methane gas and liquid waste (leachate) are produced instead.
Methane has a huge environmental impact because it is eighty times more potent at warming than carbon dioxide over twenty years. Fortunately, it does not last as long as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so dealing with the sources of methane will quickly eliminate this issue, compared to carbon dioxide which stays in the atmosphere for much longer. This makes reducing food waste, and properly composting the remaining waste a top environmental priority.
Waste in Korea
Historically, periods of economic growth have entailed environmental problems like increased pollution, deforestation and carbon emissions. In the 1990s, the Republic of Korea rapidly industrialised, with many Koreans moving from rural to urban areas. This expansion of the urban population as cities boomed meant that dumps overflowed.
The Republic of Korea is about the same size as Portugal but it is five times more populous. The country is bordered by the sea on three sides and its only land border is with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DRPK). As a result, landfills are, by necessity, near densely populated areas and have a more immediate effect on the people of Korea than in many other countries.
Landfill gas made the dumps increasingly dangerous for the waste pickers who made a living from sorting scrap metals and plastics from the dump for recyclers. But it was the foul smell and vermin attracted by the food waste that caused an outcry amongst residents of the Republic of Korea’s cities.
The government of Korea banned putting food waste into landfills in 2005. This was an important first step which reduced the rate of wasted food. But some food waste is inevitable and the nascent recycling infrastructure couldn’t cope with the sudden influx of 170,000 tonnes of food waste every day. The waste was instead treated in sewage plants and then flushed into the ocean. The waste leachate was dumped into the oceans at a rate of 3,800 tonnes a day, harming marine life.
‘Pay as you throw’
In 2013, the then conservative government of Korea took two actions that changed the way the country dealt with food waste entirely. Firstly, it ratified the London Convention on Marine Dumping, which was designed to prevent dumping of waste in the sea. This meant that Korea also had to produce an alternative to marine dumping so the government introduced a mandatory compost law.
Korea’s new compost system works as follows. Residents go to a zone which has multiple bins, secured by electronically controlled lids. To open them, residents need to scan a personal card with an RFID chip (similar to a contactless card chip) and then empty waste into the bins which are equipped with scales. The bin calculates the weight of the food added to the bin and sends the data to the Korean Environmental Corporation. A price is then calculated based on the amount of waste in the bin that is charged immediately to the user's credit card - this is on average the equivalent of five US dollars a month for a family. In the few rural areas where these recycling stations would be impractical, residents are instead asked to put their food waste in personal green bins that are collected at night.
Where does the waste go?
About 60 per cent of Korea’s food waste currently becomes animal feed. This required some experimentation at first. Feeding raw food waste to ducks and to earthworms was amongst the methods trialled initially but these struggled to be scaled. Instead, it is now primarily processed and fed to livestock and poultry.
This ensures that the food is not wasted and is used instead to lower the cost of producing animal products. But this method has led to worries about diseases within livestock, such as African Swine Fever or BSE (‘mad cow disease’). When this use of food waste needs to be paused due to the disease risk, the alternative methods of disposal, namely biogas and composting, are unable to cope with the excess.
The Korean government has recognised this and has set a target to phase out using food waste as animal feed by 2026 while increasing the capacity of biogas and compost facilities to deal with the increase in food waste.
Ten per cent of the food waste goes to biogas facilities. The government plans for this to reach fifty per cent in the near future. Biogas is created from anaerobic decomposition, much like what happens to food waste in landfills, but instead of food waste producing methane that is let off into the atmosphere, biogas is burned and used to generate low, but not no, carbon electricity.
Biogas creates CO2 when burnt, which, while still a greenhouse gas, is less potent than methane. This is still not an ideal energy source but is significantly better than leaving food waste in landfill to release methane and is less carbon intensive than fossil fuels. Biogas digesters also leave behind a solid waste as the gas is made from leachate. This is generally mixed with wood chips and given away as fertiliser. Using food waste from biogas is a big improvement from landfills and ocean dumping but this cannot be the endpoint of the food waste system in Korea.
Around a third of all food waste in the Republic of Korea goes into compost. This is the most effective method of dealing with food waste as it avoids methane emissions and enables the reuse of the food waste to grow more food. Some of the bins in Seoul can even process compost themselves for use in urban farming. The number of urban farms has increased dramatically to around 2,000 farms, compared to just 66 before the mandatory compost law was introduced. These urban farms are enjoyable for residents and produce cheap food for growers, as well as providing extra green space for all.
However, the compost produced from food waste is not as effective a fertiliser as industrial fertilisers - usually derived from fossil fuels - and so is not favoured by larger-scale farmers. There are ways around this, either by lowering the price of compost or improving its quality through addressing chemical imbalances (this compost tends to be too high in sodium) or mixing it with other fertilisers.
A free market solution
This ‘pay as you throw system’ offers a more market-based approach to tackling food waste as residents are made to pay for exactly the amount of waste they produce.
Residents pay for the food waste they throw away in two main ways. Firstly, the bags for food waste are specific regulation bags which are available from any grocery or convenience store. The bags cost around 70 cents (US) per litre, and the revenue goes back to the government to pay for part of the food processing and pick up from the bags. Residents with smart bins are charged again when they throw away food in the recycling bins with RFID chips. This revenue goes towards the upkeep of higher-tech and vermin-proof bins and is only a nominal fee, not more than around 5 US dollars for a family per month.
The headline results of the mandatory compost law have been impressive. Now 95% of all food waste is recycled in the Republic of Korea, compared to under 5% in the 1990s. The revenue from these bags and payments amounts to around 40% of the total processing in Seoul, which costs around $153 million a year. The rest is funded out of other taxation. This scheme is estimated to save the Korean government $600,000 USD a year compared to the costs of otherwise processing this food waste.
Noncompliance was initially an issue when the law was introduced, but the government offered rewards for tip offs on people who were putting food waste in bins. The offenders were fined and there is now a high level of compliance. One drawback is that this partially came at the expense of available general waste bins in public areas.
Not quite circular
Now food waste is almost 100% recycled it may be tempting to conclude that this problem is completed, but issues around waste management in Korea still remain. Neither biogas, nor animal feed is an ideal long term solution, though compared to dumping the waste in the ocean both methods are a marked improvement.
When health concerns about using animal feed occur and this practice is paused, compost and biogas systems still struggle to absorb the excess. Scaling up the production of biogas facilities in the short term and in the long term moving to compost almost all of the food waste will help Korea’s long term capacity.
The Korean government can also make the compost from food waste better performing by supplementing or mixing to make it more attractive for farmers, thereby making it truly circular.
But the most important part of this will be to reduce the volume of waste going to recycling in the first place. Cutting down on food waste, both at home and in commercial settings, is the best way to create a truly sustainable waste management system. This would also lead to a more efficient use of land, as more food grown will get eaten, freeing up space for growing more food, providing
And it’s not just food where reducing the amount wasted is the most sustainable solution. Food waste recycling has reduced the amount of landfill gas produced in Korea’s landfills and dumps as there is less organic waste, but that has not prevented fires like the one in 2019 in North Gyeongsang province that burned for more than three months continuously. Even without as much organic waste, landfills are still full of combustible materials, causing a potential health problem for citizens.
The problem with landfill was that the Republic of Korea also produces the highest rate of plastic waste per capita in the world. The recycling rate for this plastic is only at around 40%, which means that difficult to recycle plastics are either burnt for fuel, causing toxic smog, or are packed into landfills where they can sometimes combust. This combustion produces the same toxic smog as burning plastic for fuel, with the added risks of other nearby toxic substances and an uncontrollable open air burn.
Reducing the amount of food waste created in the first place and other waste that gets into these landfills is now the most pressing challenge for the Republic of Korea’s waste systems. Recycling can only be part of the solution.
Lessons to be learned from ‘pay as you throw’
Climate problems are also health problems - The smell and the vermin from landfills close to densely populated urban areas have caused health issues, and when landfill fires emerge, they can cause uncontrolled smog that can contribute to many health issues. Often, when we tackle environmental and climate problems, it can improve our health and quality of life too.
We can decouple economic growth from environmental impacts - In the past it has been almost impossible to decouple economic growth from environmental destruction as we directly relied upon natural resources like wood, coal or gas to drive economic growth. Now though, with technological solutions like biogas generators we can actually continue to have economic growth while reducing the amount of waste we produce.
Planning is important - There was an eight year gap between the outlawing of food waste dumping and the introduction of the mandatory compost law. In the meantime, civil society groups raised awareness of the importance of composting and regional governments began to roll out compost collections and build capacity for biogas generators and compost facilities.
Preventing waste is better than dealing with it - Even with the mandatory composting law, some food waste is still dumped and carbon dioxide is still generated. The best way to reduce the amount of food waste that has to be processed is to avoid the waste in the first place.
Make interventions as easy as possible - There are composting bins in every apartment complex and on every street. The waste is collected every day and the bags are sold in all convenience stores. This all makes sorting the waste easier and leads to a higher quality and less expensive eventual end product.
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