354 Seoul residents take on 100-day challenge to reduce household waste

Workers sort recyclable waste as piles of trash stack up at a recycling sorting facility in Seoul, Jan. 26. Yonhap

Seoul has begun a 100-day “waste diet” experiment involving 354 residents, as city officials seek to demonstrate that the capital is taking responsibility for its own household trash and to spark a broader movement — amid criticism that it has been offloading its waste burden onto other regions.

Under the program, 354 participants — matching the city’s per capita daily household waste generation of 354 grams — receive small electronic scales and are asked to weigh everything they throw away once a week over the course of the project, scheduled to run through June 10. They record the weight of general waste in volume‑based bags and seven types of recyclables — paper, plastic, vinyl, cans, glass bottles and polystyrene foam — and submit the data online.

Participants are first asked to establish a baseline for their typical waste output, then try to cut that amount over 10 rounds and track how much they have reduced.

Noh Su-im, director of the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s climate and environment policy division, said the campaign is meant to be a citizen-led scheme that makes waste cuts visible and measurable under the capital region’s landfill ban that came into force this year, and a first step toward broader change.

“If we can make some visible results, this is a project that can be expanded by district offices and spread more widely,” Noh told The Korea Times, adding that the city ultimately wants similar citizen‑driven “waste diets” to take root across Seoul and other regions as well.

This comes amid public anger in other parts of the country that are receiving some of Seoul household waste for incineration since the capital region banned direct landfilling of mixed household trash on Jan. 1. The Sudokwon Landfill Site in Incheon — which used to receive more than 2,000 tons of household waste a day from Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province — has seen that stream drop to almost zero since the new rules took effect. Now, only ash and residues from incinerators can be buried there, forcing Seoul to burn or recycle much more of its trash and send a remaining share to private incinerators, some as far away as the Chungcheong region.

Seoul is equipped with facilities that can incinerate about 83 percent of its household waste, leaving the rest to be handled at private incinerators outside the city and fueling complaints that the principle of treating waste close to where it is produced is being abandoned.

“We have to admit that the infrastructure hasn’t kept up,” said the director, referring to the city’s struggle to secure sites for new waste‑to‑energy plants. “So at the very least, we need to show that we are making maximum efforts to reduce waste ourselves, to minimize the damage we cause.”

Despite the complicated protocol — separating out seven recyclable categories every week in addition to regular trash — “the response was very positive,” she said.

At the end of the challenge, the city will select 10 outstanding participants to receive awards from Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon: seven who achieve the largest cuts in the amount of general waste they put in standard trash bags over 100 days and three who generate the least waste during the period. Winners will also earn eco‑mileage points based on their reduction rate, which can be used to pay city taxes and other public bills.

Son Young-hye, a member of the Green Seoul Citizens’ Committee, a city-run environmental governance body, said the project comes at a moment when “society-wide participation is urgently needed” to respond to the direct landfill ban.

“I hope it will produce meaningful results by widely spreading outstanding ideas and efforts to cut waste,” she said.