By Oh Young-jin
Staff Reporter
There are over 10,000 "grill" restaurants in Seoul with smoke from burning meat or fish sent directly into the atmosphere. As part of its eco-friendly effort, City Hall is planning to conduct a pilot program to "filter out" the smoke, starting in April next year.
According to city officials Monday, a total of 45 big grill restaurants will be selected and be given a subsidy to install filters to make smoke they emit into the air less environmentally hazardous.
At present, the restaurants have a duct pipe installed over each table that gathers the smoke from the meat before it is sent, without being filtered, directly into the air.
According to data revealed by the city council, over 18,000 tons of fine particles are produced per year in Seoul with about 900 tons coming from the restaurants.
The new system will gather smoke in one place and filter it. The city administration will select 45 restaurants from 1,600 that are 100 square meters of floor space or larger and provide them with 8 million won from the city budget. The remaining 2 million won will be paid by the restaurants.
Under the city's plan, the selected establishments will undergo a six-month pilot operation with the filtering system before a decision is made on whether to expand it or not.
If the system proves to be effective, smaller restaurants will likely be included too.
The introduction of this filtering system has been debated following complaints from residents in areas where these restaurants are clustered. They say that the smoke from the restaurants makes their lives "miserable," soiling their laundry and leaving a lingering smell in the neighborhood.
"This is part of an effort to remove pollution at its source," a city official said, adding that the city is fighting to chase away "fine particles" in the air and bad smells from neighborhoods.