Trash pickers desperate as China stops imports
Trash pickers carry cardboard boxes and other recyclable trashes in wagons. There are about 1.75 million people in South Korea who collect recyclable trashes for living, according to a Hankook Ilbo report from June 2017. / Korea Times file
By Ko Dong-hwan
Trash pickers who make a living selling discarded cardboard boxes and other recyclable waste are getting desperate because rates have plummeted following China's decision not buy more waste from Korea.
The pickers, mostly destitute elderly with no other way to make money, scavenge for and collect trash to resell. Many use a two-wheeled wagon that, when loaded, weighs as much as 100 kilograms. It is a heavy amount for many elderly laborers to carry to a local depot that buys the garbage.
In March, the depots reduced the prices being paid for trash to about half of the rates being paid in January. According to an online community for about 110,000 trash collectors on Friday, the depots were recently paying 70 won ($0.07) for 1kg of discarded cardboard boxes and 80 won for 1kg of newspapers. In January, the rates were 140 won and 150 won, respectively.
The slashed rates have left trash pickers and depot operators in desperate straits. The pickers, after hours of back-breaking labor picking up trash and pulling wagons, are left with just enough to buy a cheap meal.
A man, 78, living in Cheongju, wakes at 6 a.m., collects 90kg of trash for six hours in the city's two residential districts, spends 40 minutes pulling or pushing a wagon to a depot, and receives 6,300 won. He says he no longer wants to collect trash because the returns are miserable.
Some trash pickers travel a few kilometers further to get to a certain depot reported to be offering higher rates. This entails waking earlier and travelling further.
The slashed rates also affect depot owners, who claim that without exports to China, they do not make enough money to cover the cost of moving the trash elsewhere.
According to the Korea Environment Corporation, recycling depots in all eight provinces paid on average 89 won for 1kg of discarded cardboard boxes in March as against 144 won in January ― down 40 percent.
“The low rates will continue for a while because exporting trash to China is no longer an option,” a corporation official said.
One depot operators said online that the situation “has us shackled from selling the trash that keeps growing” and predicted that the predicament would eventually lead to a dead end.
China's recently cut its imports of recyclable waste from all over the world, worrying countries in Europe and Asia that they have nowhere else for the waste to go.