Gangdong-gu (Mayor: Lee Hae-sik) is directing its effects in reducing municipal wastes with the goal of cutting out all direct landfill municipal wastes.

 The district has fostered the municipal waste reduction project from 2015 in accordance with the ‘public disposal facility load control project for zero landfill municipal wastes.’ With the standard of municipal wastes (40,105 tonnes) produced in 2014, the district has seen a reduction of over 10% each year since, and in the past year, the district saw a reduction of 13.4% of municipal wastes amounting to 5,360 tonnes.

 This year’s project will be centered on voluntary citizen participation. It is a priority to reduce municipal wastes in order to solve the serious environmental issue of recyclable waste, and this will be impossible without citizen participation.

 Main projects include ▲ regulation of weighted garbage bags and mixed disposal of recyclables and foods, ▲ publicity of separate garbage disposal through illegal disposal protectors, ▲ fortification of strict regulation of illegal garbage disposal in common areas by regulators, ▲publicity and regulation of separate garbage disposal for businesses with large quantities of garbage, ▲ control public institutions and related organizations and their usage of single use products and ▲ reduced usage of plastic bags through the use of traditional market shopping bags.

 Specifically, citizen publicity will be fortified for voluntary citizen participation in reducing and recycling garbage as well as the input of ‘illegal disposal protectors’ in 128 centers of common areas with illegal garbage disposal, information for separate garbage disposal upon giving a moving-in notification and joint inspection and campaign through the operation of garbage reduction.

 There will also be the fortification of intensive control of illegal garbage disposal through the use of crime preventing CCTVs, strengthened regulation of real-name weighted garbage bag disposal by street cleaners and operation of a group to take practical measures against separate garbage disposal through eleven divisions under the leadership of the Deputy Mayor. These plans will offer a comprehensive response system to reducing municipal wastes.

 Gangdong-gu further plans to urge businesses, that are commonly visited by the public such as PC rooms, saunas and movie theaters, to properly separate the disposal of recyclables while reducing garbage and creating resource circulation through an environment-friendly policy in which used coffee grounds and dead leaves are reused.

In addition, the district plans to expand and install apartment house RFID weight scales for each household to reduce food waste. The RFID weight scale will measure the weight of food waste that is produced from each household. Currently, 420 weight scales are installed throughout Gangdong-gu. Apartment complexes (with a minimum of sixty households) desiring the installment of the RFID weight scales, after reaching an agreement at the resident representative meeting, may apply through the Gangdong-gu Office Cleaning Administration Division (☎02-3425-5883) by May 11.

Mayor Lee Hae-sik commented, “Recently, China, who had imported over half of all the waste produced in the whole world, expanded their import prohibition list of recyclable waste. If we want to stop the recurrence of a garbage crisis, we must prepare fundamental measures for garbage disposal. Again, we will need citizens to make efforts to reduce garbage. We hope that our citizens will cooperate with us by actively taking part in helping reduce garbage and separate disposal of garbage to create a cleaner and better Gangdong-gu to live in.”

<Related Photos>

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  Photo exhibition for participation in reducing garbage

  

  Garbage reduction campaign with citizens

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