“Trash Tour” of the Mapo Resource Recovery Facility, the Sudokwon Landfill, a recycling sorting station, and more
By Park Ju-yeon
Published Mar. 20, 2024
Translated by Marilyn Hook
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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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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
Original Article : https://ildaro.com/9864 |
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