South Korea once recycled 2% of its food waste. Now it recycles 95%

Urban Farm DB summary

This 12 April 2019 World Economic Forum article reports that South Korea's food waste recycling rate rose from about 2% around 1995 to 95% today, attributing the shift to a 2005 landfill ban and a 2013 pay-as-you-throw system using biodegradable designated bags (costing a typical family of four about $6 a month, with bag sales covering 60% of recycling program operating costs). It cites Seoul's rollout of 6,000 automated weighing bins as reducing waste by 47,000 tons over six years and saving $8.4 million in collection costs.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 2 %

  recycling rate(food waste recycling)

  Policy

  region

  South Korea

  year

  circa 1995

• 95 %↑ Increase

  recycling rate(food waste recycling)

  PolicyControl: 1995年頃の2%からの上昇

  region

  South Korea

  year

  2019

• 47,000 t↓ Decrease

  waste reduction(seoul food waste)

  SocialControl: 自動計量ビン導入前との比較

  region

  Seoul, South Korea

  method

  automated weighing bins

  year

  6-year period

• 6 usd

  monthly household cost(food waste fee)

  Economics

  region

  South Korea

  year

  2013

• 8,400,000 usd↓ Decrease

  collection cost savings(seoul food waste)

  Economics

  region

  Seoul, South Korea

• 6,000 bins

  automated bins count(seoul food waste)

  Social

  region

  Seoul, South Korea

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Policy and governanceSupports