South Korea's mountain of plastic waste shows limits of recycling

LG Chem

22/11/2024 05:07

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      S.Korea to host U.N. plastics treaty talks next week
    

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      Activists say plastic recycling numbers inflated
    

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      Waste industry experts say recycling can't keep up
    

  
    By Joyce Lee
       SEOUL, Nov 22 (Reuters) - South Korea has won
international praise for its recycling efforts, but as it
prepares to host talks for a global plastic waste agreement,
experts say the country's approach highlights its limits. 
    When the talks known as INC-5 kick off in Busan next week,
debate is expected to centre around whether a U.N. treaty should
seek to limit the amount of plastic being made in the first
place.
    Opponents of such an approach, including major plastic and
petrochemical producers like Saudi Arabia and China, have argued
in previous rounds that countries should focus on less
contentious topics, such as plastic waste management.
    South Korea says that it recycles 73% of its plastic waste,
compared to about 5%-6% in the United States, and the country
might seem to be a model for a waste management approach.
    The bi-monthly MIT Technology Review magazine has rated
South Korea as "one of the world’s best recycling economies",
and the only Asian country out of the top 10 on its Green Future
Index in 2022.
    But environmental activists and members of the waste
management industry say the recycling numbers don't tell the
whole story.
    South Korea's claimed rate of 73% "is a false number,
because it just counts plastic waste that arrived at the
recycling screening facility - whether it is recycled,
incinerated, or landfilled afterward, we don't know," said Seo
Hee-won, a researcher at local activist group Climate Change
Center.
    Greenpeace estimates South Korea recycles only 27% of its
total plastic waste. The environment ministry says the
definition of waste, recycling methods and statistical
calculation vary from country to country, making it difficult to
evaluate uniformly. 
    South Korea's plastic waste generation increased from 9.6
million tonnes in 2019 to 12.6 million tonnes in 2022, a 31%
jump in three years partly due to increased plastic packaging of
food, gifts and other online orders that mushroomed during the
pandemic, activists said. Data for 2023 has not been released.
    A significant amount of that plastic is not being recycled,
according to industry and government sources and activists,
sometimes for financial reasons.
    At a shuttered plastic recycling site in Asan, about 85 km
(53 miles) south of Seoul, a mountain of about 19,000 tonnes of
finely ground plastic waste is piled up untreated, emitting a
slightly noxious smell. Local officials said the owner had run
into money problems, but could not provide details.
    "It will probably take more than 2-3 billion won ($1.43
million-$2.14 million) to remove," said an Asan regional
government official. "The owner is believed unable to pay, so
the cleanup is low priority for us."
    Reuters has reported that more than 90% of plastic waste
gets dumped or incinerated because there is no cheap way to
repurpose it, according to a 2017 study.
       
    NO CONCRETE GOALS
    South Korean government's regulations on single-use plastic
products have also been criticised for being inconsistent. In
November 2023, the environment ministry eased restrictions on
single-use plastic including straws and bags, rolling back rules
it had strengthened just a year earlier.
        "South Korea lacks concrete goals toward reducing
plastic use outright, and reusing plastic," said Hong Su-yeol,
director of Resource Circulation Society and Economy Institute
and an expert on the country's waste management.
    Nara Kim, a Seoul-based campaigner for plastic use reduction
at Greenpeace, said South Korea's culture of valuing elaborate
packaging of gifts and other items needs to change, while other
activists pointed to the influence of the country's
petrochemical producers. 
    "Companies are the ones that pay the money, the taxes," said
a recycling industry official who declined to be identified
because of the sensitivity of the issue, adding that this
enabled them to wield influence. "The environment ministry is
the weakest ministry in the government." 
    The environment ministry said South Korea manages waste 
over the entire cycle from generation to recycling and final
disposal. 
    The government has made some moves to encourage Korea Inc to
recycle, including its petrochemical industry that ranks fifth
in global market share.
    President Yoon Suk Yeol said at the G-20 summit on Tuesday
that "efforts to reduce plastic pollution must also be made" for
sustainable development, and that his government will support
next week's talks. 
    The government has changed regulations to allow companies
like leading petrochemical producer LG Chem  051910.KS  to
generate naphtha, its primary feedstock, by recycling plastic
via pyrolysis. SK Chemicals'  285130.KS  depolymerisation
chemical recycling output has already been used in products such
as water bottles as well as tyres for high-end EVs. 
    Pyrolysis involves heating waste plastic to extremely high
temperatures causing it to break down into molecules that can be
repurposed as a fuel or to create second-life plastic products.
But the process is costly, and there is also criticism that it
increases carbon emissions. 
    "Companies have to be behind this," said Jorg Weberndorfer,
Minister Counsellor at the trade section of the EU Delegation to
South Korea. 
    "You need companies who really believe in this and want to
have this change. I think there should be an alliance between
public authorities and companies."  
($1 = 1,399.4900 won)

 (Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
 ((joyce.lee@tr.com;))