Food waste volume to decide fees

A boy disposes of food waste at his apartment complex in Songpa District, southern Seoul, Sunday, using a radiofrequency identification system that calculates the weight of waste automatically and imposes fees based on the data. Yonhap

By Kim Jae-won

The more food waste you throw away, the more disposal fees you have to pay in line with new rules that went into effect Sunday.

With volume-based food waste disposal, the Ministry of Environment seeks to reduce the amount of waste nationwide by more than 20 percent.

The new system will be implemented by 129 of 144 municipal governments — the remaining 15 will do so by the end of the year.

We estimate that the new system will save 160 billion won in costs every year.

We ask people to make the system work effectively though it may be inconvenient in the beginning, said the ministry.

It said that pilot cases showed that there was a clear correlation between volume-based disposal system and a reduction in food waste.

According to data from the ministry, food waste in Jeongeup, North Jeolla Province dropped 28.7 percent to 620 grams per day per household last year from a year ago since it adopted the system.

However, poor publicity, and the differences in fees and methods are causing confusions among households.

The amount of fees on food waste disposal varies by municipal office and type of disposal.

For instance, Guri, Gyeonggi Province, levies 42 won per kilogram for those who use a radiofrequency identification (RFID) system, while imposing 41 won per liter for residents who dispose of their food waste with pre-paid stickers.

RFID is the wireless non-contact transfer of data for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects.

With the technology, the municipal office can collect waste by household and set fees based on the data.

Pre-paid stickers are generally used for houses where people put them in waste boxes set up outside their homes.

Janitors remove them when they collect the waste as a means of getting payment.

Restaurants and cafes are also subject to the same regulations, according to the ministry.

Small restaurant owners said that the fees are burdensome to them.

We pay at least 5,000 won to 6,000 won for food waste disposal every day.

It is not that small for us, said Jeon Hye-ock who runs a lunch box restaurant in western Seoul.

The government says restaurants need to cut waste by cooking appropriate amount of foods.

Korean restaurants serve too many side dishes even though customers do not eat them all. We need to change such habits, said Baek Kyu-seok, a director of the environment ministry who designed the system.

The ministry said that there are three measures to calculate volume or weight of food waste — RFID, pre-paid stickers and pre-paid authorized plastic bags.

Among the 129 municipal offices which are applying the system, 84 of them use pre-paid stickers, while 23 adopted RFID, and 22 pre-paid plastic bags.