INTERVIEW Next year's landfill ban prompts private collectors to step up

A truck unloads waste at Cheongsong Industrial Development in Dongducheon, Gyeonggi Province, Sept. 11. The private waste incinerator is a member of the Korea Resource-Recycling Energy Mutual-Aid Association. Korea Times photo by Ko Dong-hwan

By Ko Dong-hwan

• Published Sep 24, 2025 12:01 PM KST
• Updated Sep 24, 2025 4:06 PM KST

Strict environmental practices ensure safety

DONGDUCHEON, Gyeonggi Province — Private trash incinerators nationwide can treat waste efficiently and cleanly when Sudokwon Landfill, a public landfill serving the capital region since 1992, stops accepting non-incinerated waste next year due to limited capacity, according to the head of the private businesses’ association.

Kim Hyung-soon, chairman of the Korea Resource-Recycling Energy Mutual-Aid Association (KREMA), which includes 84 registered private incinerator and landfill operators, said that private facilities have been the country’s last line of defense for waste treatment whenever public facilities reach capacity.

Kim said private firms are strict about keeping their operations clean, following government regulations that have become increasingly rigorous. He added that private facilities are a legally designated alternative for waste treatment when public facilities become unavailable.

“When Sudokwon Landfill stops accepting non-incinerated waste, that leaves 3,200 tons of everyday waste from Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province untreated each day,” Kim, who runs his own waste incinerator in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, told The Korea Times in an interview at KREMA’s office in Seoul.

“Our member facilities altogether have 3,300 tons of capacity to treat daily. Excluding recyclable industrial waste that some of the facilities are accepting amid declining waste volume to avoid losing money, that capacity jumps to 4,000 tons.”

Private incinerators must abide by national regulations and standards that curb environmentally harmful emissions to maintain their businesses. At Cheongsong Industrial Development, a KREMA member in Dongducheon, a central monitoring room tracks the real-time toxicity level of emitted chemicals, including sulfur oxide, hydrogen chloride, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. That data is shared with the Ministry of Environment, which oversees the businesses.

Most private incinerators now recycle steam from their operations by either supplying it to nearby manufacturers through pipes or generating electricity to sell. The practice saves costs on building additional boilers to generate heat or electric energy, while emitting fewer greenhouse gases.

“For the past 45 years, we have been adhering to the regulations the government kept intensifying to better control harmful emissions from waste incineration. The authority now updates the regulations every five years. We have been investing in improving facilities’ emission controls. We now use a selective catalytic reduction technique to reduce harmful nitrogen oxide emission. We have upgraded our steam boilers to minimize steam loss and maximize recyclability. The results are that our advanced techniques are now on par with those in any other developed place, like Japan or Europe,” Kim said.

However, private incinerators have recently faced skepticism in the wake of concern over the Sudokwon Landfill. Critics have questioned whether private facilities can handle the massive volume of waste previously managed by the Incheon-based landfill. Mistrust has centered around their limited capacity, higher costs and potential risks, including allegations of unfair business practices.

Responding to the skepticism, Kim issued a press release last month refuting the claims. He said the rumors came after private incinerators in Incheon, as well as Gyeonggi, South Chungcheong and North Chungcheong provinces, emerged as the most feasible alternatives to Sudokwon Landfill. Some local governments that depended on the landfill began signing long-term waste treatment contracts with private operators that start next year and last up to three years.

He added that commissioning private facilities for waste treatment when needed is fully legitimate under the country’s Wastes Control Act.

“Local municipalities without public sector waste treatment facilities have depended on the private sector for the past 20 years. Between October last year and June, private facilities safely treated over 502,000 tons of waste from 64 local districts nationwide. And their rate of price per ton on average is 145,000 won ($105), lower than the 150,000 won charged by the ministry through Sudokwon Landfill,” Kim said.

Some of the criticism originated with the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The city, in its bid to expand an existing waste incinerator in western Seoul’s Mapo District, recently petitioned the Seoul High Court, claiming that private incinerators “are not well monitored by public watchdogs and have high risk of illegal business activities.”

The petition followed the local government losing a Seoul Central District Court decision to Mapo District Office and its residents, who opposed the expansion plan and instead advocated using private facilities.

“That statement seriously disgraced all the private businesses in this country that have been faithfully adhering to regulations and operating with environment-conscious minds. The city government considered us potential criminals,” Kim said. He and KREMA are preparing a counterstatement against the city government. “Bylaws under the city government and city districts of Mapo, Jongno, Yongsan, Jung and Seodaemun all stipulated the necessity of private incinerators for treating their waste.”

Tension with cement makers

Another player in the waste treatment sector is cement manufacturers who use waste as raw material. Waste is placed inside a cement kiln and turned into ash, then mixed with limestone to make cement.

However, according to KREMA, the manufacturers currently do not use any anti-emission treatment technologies. It added that the government has not enforced any regulations against such practices, instead labeling them as eco-friendly simply because they recycle waste.

Kim said the practice is common abroad as well, but is subject to oversight by authorities. In Korea, however, no such external monitoring exists, posing a serious environmental threat.

“The cement manufacturers make no such efforts, releasing uncontrolled emissions of nitrogen oxide and carbon monoxide. Hexavalent chromium, a highly cancerous agent, is strictly controlled under 2 to 5 milliliters per kilogram outside Korea. Here, the figure exceeds 20 milliliters with no regulation in place,” Kim said.

Kim said cement makers have continued this practice for the past 27 years largely because it saves them the cost of buying coal to generate heat for baking limestone inside the kilns. By using waste, the cement firms get paid for treating them.

“The firms are profiting enormously by using waste as raw material. The government, meanwhile, mitigated the regulations or even deregulated them to spur their businesses. These companies, all located near the country’s east coast and forming a ‘cement belt,’ will generate an enormous volume of harmful emissions once they all start incinerating the waste,” Kim said.

The country’s cement industry plans to continue this controversial practice, arguing that Sudokwon Landfill’s ban on burying non-incinerated waste will leave up to 3.8 million tons untreated. The industry also claimed that its decades-long use of combustible waste has contributed to producing high-quality cement and positioned itself as playing an important role in resource recycling. It added that combustible waste should be barred from landfills and incineration plants so it can be further sorted to extract materials for use as fuel in cement production.