Talking Rubbish

By John Rule

Contributing Writer

Where are all the bins? I mean seriously, where are they? A recent study discovered that there are in fact three bins in Seoul, all situated within three feet of each other outside a Prada store in Gangnam, southern Seoul. O.K., maybe that's not quite true… there are four.

Now, Seoul is not a dirty city, which considering the bin situation is pretty incredible, and shows that in general, Seoulites want to and can keep the city clean. However, one can still walk along a street and be suddenly met with a whiff more at home on a cattle ranch than the affable streets of an international capital city. Why? Simple, no bins.

You've just finished your Magnum ice-cream, and now, stuck with the sticky, soggy cardboard packaging you have three choices, shove it in your pocket, a no-no, no matter what you are wearing, shove it in someone else's pocket, or leave it on the street, delicately balanced on one of the many small pagoda like piles of trash dotted around the city. And that's the problem. We are forced to litter. But forced by who?

Korea constantly claims to be a hub of this and a hub of that, and Seoul now has more personas than Prince. But none of this is important if, when visitors do come, the one thing they remember more than anything else is how the smell reminded them of that one Christmas when Grandma Hetty ate 17 boiled eggs and then proceeded to break wind for six hours.

And of course it's not just the smell. It doesn't take Stephen Hawkins to realize that no bins equals trash, which equals dirt, bacteria, rodents, disease, and God knows what else. We lambaste people for not washing their hands after they've been the toilet, well some of us do ― those who don't are the ones not washing ― but say nothing about a society that forces us to throw garbage onto the streets.

So what can be done? Its easy, bins, bins, and more bins. Seoul needs more. What I do know is that the more bins there are, the less garbage there will be on streets, and the more clean, hygienic, and nose friendly the place will become.

This will lead to an improvement in the city's image, which in turn will promote tourism, which will help the economy, and so on and so on. Not mentioning the immediate benefits it would have for all of us living here.

The government recently announced its drive to turn Korea into a top green technology producing country, and I applaud this. Yet it's a little ironic that the country still hasn't conquered yet that most basic piece of 'green' technology, the bin.

The author lives in Seoul and can be reached at johnrule73@hotmail.com