I am glad Seoul implemented the Ecard for waste disposal. Throwing the food waste was my least favorite thing to do. I had to manually open the lid and the pungent smell would follow. It has all the food waste combined from all the households that had been thrown before I did. Let’s leave it at that before you get the full picture.
Automated food waste bins started showing up around. Other areas and apartments may not have it yet but it looks like it will be fully implemented.
The food waste collection is called the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) System, a government-initiated system rolled out in 2012. Most apartments here in Korea has this garbage bin/s and each household is provided with their respective cards. The card bears your address and is connected to the billing system of each apartment so households will be billed accordingly for every kilogram of food waste deposited.
How this works:
- cardholder tags the card and the bin opens.
- food is deposited and the screen tells you how much (in weight) you have deposited
- cardholder tags the card again and the bin closes
The small screen will always show how much garbage is already deposited inside the bin so home owners would know whether the bin is full or not. Garbage collection is pretty efficient here in Seoul.
For a country known for beautification of its places and its people, it isn’t hard to imagine that it can monetize wastes, too. And I mean it in a good way.
Ang saya naman tumira sa Korea! Pati garbage collection high tech. Parang malabong magkaganyan dito sa Pilipinas, but who knows right?
let’s not lose hope hihihi
Grabe! Super high tech naman pala diyan. Imagine, pati basurahan ganyan. Still hoping na maging ganyan din dito sa Pinas
Haven’t seen any in our neighboorhood or nearby apartments. It’s really nice kasi minsan ang hirap magtapon ng basura, can’t leave it outside. Need to wait for the schedule before leaving it outside the house.
color-coded ang plastic para sa food waste ninyo?
I do wish we have this system in the Philippines, but yeah our government won’t invest in this. We need this especially in the city.
so yung mga tinapon mo babayaran ka pa ng government?
hindi po. kami ang magbabayad ng tinapon namin na food waste. this is done to discourage food wastes because Koreans are known to have a lot of banchan (side dishes) when they eat. a lot ends up as food waste. when this was implemented, there was a significant decrease in food waste.
Here’s wishing and praying the Philippines will have these around the country!
Ugh, i actually had that idea atvthe back of my head. Charging for a waste is a excellent idea for a business, but it had great implications for the environment and develops discipline for the people. They should do that as well in the philippines, as well as resolve the other issues we got going on.
Korea doesn’t fail to amaze me, from robot tour guide sa airport, this time with their rfid waste management system. Very efficient 🙂