Your complete guide to garbage disposal in South Korea!

[stutterflies.livejournal.com]

If you just landed and are planning to stay for a while you might have notice that garbage disposal in South Korea works a little different in comparison to other countries. But not worry this article will help you understand everything you need to know about garbage disposal and recycling.

Garbage Bags

There are various types of garbage bags in South Korea. But the most important that you need to know about are the following. Something important to remember is each district has their own official garbage bag so you will have to use the one that is exclusively to the neighborhood you live in. (i.e. You can’t use a bag for Yonsang-Gu in Gangnam-Gu).

General Waste Bag (일반 쓰레기 봉투) These bags are generally white, but the color can vary in some districts.

Food Waste Bag (음식물 쓰레기 봉투) This bag is exclusively for food waste, they were introduced in order to make the citizens of South Korea to be more conscious about the amount of food they throw away.

Recyclable Waste Bag (재활용 쓰레기 봉투)

You don’t need a special bag for recycling because usually you separate the recyclable waste in their proper containers, if there aren’t any, you can use any bag to collect it and leave it in the designated area.

Prices & Size (by District)

The Korean government implemented this system where households and businesses purchase bags, whose prices include the collection and disposal of garbage.

Where to Buy Garbage Bags

These special garbage bags are available in convenience stores, chain supermarkets or your friendly neighborhood marts. There are many ways to get these garbage bags, they can be on display or in some instances you will have to go to the cashier or customer service center to ask for them.



How To Ask For Garbage Bags
(In case there are not on display)

일반 쓰레기 봉투 있어요? (il-ban sseu-le-gi bong-tu iss-eo-yo?)
Do you have general waste garbage bags?

음식물 쓰레기 봉투 있어요? (eum-sig-mul sseu-le-gi bong-tu iss-eo-yo?)
Do you have food waste garbage bags?

After you asked, if they have available they will ask you either of these two questions (or both):

몇 장? (myeoch-jang?) How many [garbage bags]? The bags are usually bundled in sets of 10 or 20 bags, depending on their size. But you can ask for a specific quantity if you want.

몇 리터? (myeoch-li-teo?) How many liters? [bag size is measured in liters] *Not every place has all the sizes available.

Types Of Waste/Garbage

General Waste (일반 쓰레기)

General waste is all that that doesn’t fit in the recyclables or food waste category, it includes used tissue, used toilet paper (in some instances you don’t flush it down the toilet), sanitary pads, old shoes and clothes, etc.

*In some places they have a container exclusively for clothes recycling.

Recyclable Waste (재활용 쓰레기)

Recyclable waste is actually quite easy to classify, not only because of what you have learned in school about recycling but because most packages include a recycling symbol indicating in which type of container it belongs to.

Paper Pack (i.e. juice, milk, etc)	Glass (i.e. Beer bottles)	Cans (i.e. aluminium or Iron)
Paper (i.e. printing paper, magazines, newspaper, boxes, cartons, etc.)	Plastic (NOT including Toys, stationery pens, small candy wraps)	PET Bottles	Vinyl (i.e. snack bags, dessert wraps, etc)

Food Waste (음식물 쓰레기)

Food waste include anything edible, there are some exceptions but you just have to follow the golden rule of: “If an animal will eat it, then it goes in the food waste bag”

(i.e. fruit peel, vegetable peel, watermelon skin, uneaten cooked or uncooked meat, raw egg without the shell, etc)

The exceptions for food waste are, egg shells, crustacean shells (Crab, Lobster, Shrimp, etc), clam shells, onion and garlic paper like skin, animal bones (beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc), tea bags or tea leaves. All of these are considered GENERAL WASTE.

Oversized Waste (대형 쓰레기)

As the name states, is waste that is way to big to be collected in a conventional garbage bag. For example: refrigerators, induction cookers, TVs, air conditioners, gas ranges, big furniture like bed mattresses, sofas, desks, coffee tables, microwaves, washing machine, etc.

For oversized waste you have to contact your local district office and request for oversized garbage disposal, they will ask you what type of waste it is, how big it is, and then they will give you a sticker to place on what are you going to dispose. Place the oversized object in the designated area on the appointed date.

You also can do this process online (most districts have an English version), just go to your district official website, look for oversized garbage disposal, select the type of object, select your way of payment, credit or bank transfer, then print the sticker and attach it on the object and put it in the designated area on the appointed date.

Collection Time & Place

Garbage disposal in South Korea is not done every day and it depends on the district that you live in. To check when the collection times are you can ask your landlord, real estate agent or ask the building management office, also the garbage bags themselves should have the designated day and hour of disposal. If not, you also can look up your district website, they have useful information and the majority has an english version.

Even though the day of the week may be different between districts, the time of disposal is typically after sundown (7:00PM-ish or 8:00PM) until early in the morning next day (5:00 AM).

Penalties

If you don’t comply with the regulations you will have to pay a fine, and depending on where you live they can go up till ₩300,000 (around USD$300 if you take ₩1,000 = USD1$).

source: 10 Magazine Korea

[Poll #2049874]

Comments

[jeit91.livejournal.com]

what a refreshing post. gg op

[stutterflies.livejournal.com]

ty! I wish cleanliness upon you!

[ironicmustache.livejournal.com]

this is a very informative post because trash collection is one of the things i had the hardest time learning while living there! it was a big revelation when i was just starting to learn korean and figured out how/where to buy them and what they were called lmao. my friend and i thought we were killin it when we learned where to get the good trash bags.

eventually i noticed no one in my neighborhood really cared/complied, so i'd just put everything in one bag, with the recyclables just laying next to the trash pile since some grandma or grandpa would come pick them up within 20 mins anyway.

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

The places I lived didn't have recycling bins really. Ah wait, the first one did, but my second apartment didn't. I mean, people mostly separated it, but all the trash ended up in one big pile on the corner (gross). I admittedly got lazy a few times and just threw everything together >.> I didn't have a food waste bin... (I didn't cook much!).

Anyway someone must sort it out because I'd wake up and all the trash would be gone.

[chibi-rei.livejournal.com]

*In some places they have a container exclusively for clothes recycling.

If it's the bins that say they are for donations (and not just throwing them away) DO NOT put your clothes in there. Back in the day those used to be for charities, but these shady groups took many of them over and sell them for profit. It's a pain, but there are charities that collect clothes. Also you can donate to places directly. I had my friend take my gently-worn clothes to the women's shelter and orphanage.

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

Yeah we have one of those, but we donate to the secondhand store instead once I saw the old ladies digging through it to get clothes to resell.

[myrrhcat.livejournal.com]

it seems like that's happened in the US too. there are a lot of "clothing drop-off" bins around here and apparently they just get shredded, turned into rags and sold.

[fairchilds.livejournal.com]

i thought this was a post about Yoochun

[bi-bing-ka.livejournal.com]

When I lived in Busan, we had to separate the food waste into a small red bin with no bag. And then we had to attach a chip that we purchased from the market onto the red bin as a form of payment for collecting the waste. But like someone earlier pointed out, nobody EVER did that.

[dorawa.livejournal.com]

The OP of this article must live in the city. It isn't like this in the countryside. It's nothing on you OP, but I really hate when people write about Korea and only have experience in the cities, because then people come to the countryside and are shocked at how it actually is.


The apartment complexes have netted recycling bins that aren't labeled, you just kind of follow whoever puts their recycling in first. Then boxes go off to the side for the old ladies to collect and sell for money.



Like this, some are labeled, some aren't.


There is no "food waste bag" it is either in a food waste container like this:



This is my cities.


Or my husband and I just put it in a jug. Then you have to take it to a specific garbage can that is for all the food waste in the apartment complex.




The garbage bags are different based on your city and your "-eup" or "-si" or whatever and you can't interchange them or they won't be accepted. They are different colors depending on where you live. You can go to any store and ask "쓰레기 봉투 주세요" and they will give you one, they come in 20, 50 and 100L. You want 20. You don't have to buy a whole roll. Mine cost 480 won.

Our garbage gets taken out three times a week at like 6-7am.

My bags:




If you get caught not complying or putting garbage where it doesn't belong, you will get fined, but usually they either take it anyway or right now my town is putting up banners calling people out with blurred pictures. I can't find a picture though it's kind of hilarious.

If there's anything I forgot, lemme know!

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

good post, and good comments.

reminds me wehen i moved countries......gosh i'm still shocked every time i realize how much more (plastic and paper) packaging they use in western europe compared to eastern europe.

btw does the countryside also have food delivery where you have to leave the dishes out? that seemed like a cool system in seoul/busan, idk if it works elsewhere.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_redneckbitchx/]

I was thankful my roommate in Korea was Korean cause the organizing your recyclables/trash was really confusing when I first got there. This is really informative. Thanks OP!

[funkaliciousss.livejournal.com]

So which category does Super Junior fall into?

[fashionxxavenue.livejournal.com]

im lazy and just put my food trash in the regular trash bag if its a small amount or in the subway station bin if its a lot ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[yixingsforehead.livejournal.com]

this sounds convenient. interesting that there isn't one for plastic. can you imagine that in the place where i live in nl they only collect paper and cardboard every month no bin? :((( god i need paper/cardboard collection bins back asap

[imahurricane.livejournal.com]

ah i just knew this! my aus tlist tweet about bin day every now and then and i got confused cause i thought they come and collect them every day. now i know why.

[nrafx.livejournal.com]

This is how it was in my area growing up, with separate yellow/blue bins, but all the recycling is just combined where I am now (and I'm in an apartment so no green bins).

Also, the bin sizes were different, so garbage bins = smaller than recycling bins, and I think we had a larger garden waste bin.

[nana-the-dwarf.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about what you do with pet poop. What category does that all in?

In Mexico (or at least where I live), we also separate food, paper/plastic/cardboard and in some cases garden waste (we just have a huge whole in my garden that we then use as compost); but you're also supposed to separate pet poop in a diferent bag. Each bag has a strip of a different color to label it, green for food/garden stuff, white for general trash/garden, black for pet poop and transparent for toiletries, which is gross so most people also wrap it in a second black bag. Recyclables like cardboard, newspaper, tin and glass are left aside piled up for a truck to pick up.

The trucks are annoyingly unreliable though. They're supposed to make the rounds every week in the morning, but they show up whenever the hell they want, even at night and when they do come by, they don't even bother organizing the bags, they just haul it all in, so what we did was buy a cart that can be attached to the car and we drop our trash at a mini trash station directly.

We had up to 11 pets at one point, so it was a nightmare. Orz

[yakuniku-8.livejournal.com]

It's not about recycling but it was so hard to find a bin in the streets in Korea, even at bus stops or near touristic places.

[imahurricane.livejournal.com]

i remember the first time i was in seoul, i was so frustrated looking for a trash can and when i did find it, i was so confused cause there are 4 different type of trash cans. later i found out that the government in korea has a law about trash can location and about trash categories.

[cosmicjam.livejournal.com]

Really interesting post op, thanks for sharing

I live in the us and from what i've seen our garbage disposal system kinda sucks and we waste sooo much :(

[nefertitii.livejournal.com]

when i staying in seoul i was so confused i just threw out everything.. and the bins were around the corner looking the same so i just dumped the trash in one

im srry pls 4give me i will do better.

its so straight forward in germany. in japan it was a bit ?? because not all plastic was recyclable and in seoul i was full out ??????

[921227.livejournal.com]

Informative, good going OP!
I remember watching a drama (idr which) and the characters were making the biggest deal about trash and I was just lost because I'm from the US and we just throw our shit anywhere tbh I did live in Germany for a long time tho where you /have/ to recycle and they had this big metal containers in our neighborhood for the different glass and every week I would lug this big bin down there to throw out all the bottles and that was fun getting to smash the glass

[goshipgurl.livejournal.com]

they had this big metal containers in our neighborhood for the different glass
lol yes, we take recycling very serious.


in germany its:
green glass, white glass, brown glass, paper, plastic, organic waste, domestic waste (all the rest like sanitary stuff, q-tips, tissues, blabla)

if you have used batteries you must bring them to a store, they have extra battery containers. do now throw them into the domestic waste container.

[921227.livejournal.com]

Yea! but It was easy to start recycling once you knew what went where & how to, unlike in the states it's a lot harder if recyclables aren't included in your trash pickup because you have to organize it yourself :/ We have a catch all recycle can but I know a lot of my neighbors don't even bother to do it

[kaninasan.livejournal.com]

I'm from the US and we just throw our shit anywhere tbh

that's crazy omg. imagine how much resources would be saved if everyone in the US recycled? I once heard that if everyone in the US recycled their aluminum cans that would save like 2-3 huge aluminum smelters, that are really energy intensive and pollute a lot.

[modestgoddess79.livejournal.com]

In my state we recycle on Thursday and trash is Tuesday

[petecarl.livejournal.com]

for the US, it depends a lot on state and local laws for recycling and compost. like, my city requires both, but the 2nd largest city in my state only recently got a recycling center for paper, before they could only recycle stuff like corrugated cardboard on top of glass and plastic bottle containers.

[aidolls.livejournal.com]

I love this post! Thanks op.

I'm visiting my parents right now & I'm excited (lol) because my hometown just implemented an organic wastes bin. We already had paper & glass/can recycling, so this is a good next step. It's crazy to hear how complicated it is in other places.

I've been bummed because my apartment only has a trash dumpster, not even recycling :[ And I don't even have a car so I can't bring in recycling myself *sigh*