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Hur Ji-hyun, a 41-year-old “upcycling” designer in Seoul, is a big fan of soy milk. However the environmentally acutely aware South Korean was all the time troubled by the truth that every pack of her favoured model got here with a plastic straw, which she by no means used.
So, two years in the past, she despatched a bundle of straws again to the soy milk producer, together with a letter stating that many customers didn’t want the straws. As she shared her story on social media, many like-minded customers adopted in her footsteps, forcing the nation’s two fundamental dairy and soy milk producers — Maeil Dairies and Namyang Dairy Merchandise — to revamp packages with out straws for some merchandise.
“Many individuals assume their particular person voice or motion won’t make a distinction, nevertheless it does,” says Hur. “We are able to simply get united because of the web and social media.”
As her story exhibits, the so-called “zero waste” motion is gaining momentum in South Korea as younger customers and environmental activists pile stress on firms to cut back plastics as a part of their transition in direction of a greener financial system.
Their rising enthusiasm for inexperienced residing lately propelled the nation to the highest of the “inexperienced society” class within the Inexperienced Future Index 2022, a rating compiled by MIT Know-how Assessment, a media firm affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how. A excessive rating means the neighborhood embraces sustainability by means of actions resembling recycling, guaranteeing buildings are eco-friendly, and consuming much less meat and dairy.
South Korea has one of many world’s highest per capita plastic consumption charges. However it additionally has well-developed waste assortment and recycling providers, with a recycling charge that reached 68 per cent final yr, based on consulting agency Frost & Sullivan.
Confronted with client stress to introduce extra inexperienced insurance policies, the federal government introduced a plan in 2020 to cut back plastic waste by 20 per cent by 2025.
It’s also increasing its prolonged producer accountability programme, which obliges firms to get rid of plastic waste from their merchandise. The scheme has prompted about 10 bottled water producers, together with big-selling manufacturers resembling Nongshim and Lotte Chilsung, to promote their water with out labels in order that the bottles are simpler to recycle.
![Workers sort plastic waste at Yongin Recycling Center in Yongin, South Korea](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F8103b048-d0fa-486d-88f2-b5681e746ccd.jpg?fit=scale-down&source=next&width=700)
As well as, Asia’s largest café financial system — as South Korea is typically dubbed — will make espresso retailers cost a refundable deposit for disposable cups from December, after banning the usage of plastic cups for dine-in clients in 2018. “This might be our first step to improve our waste administration system that different nations can benchmark,” says Hong Su-yeol, who runs Useful resource Recycle Consulting — and is healthier often called “Dr Waste” in South Korea.
Hong says customers’ environmental consciousness has sharply elevated since a Chinese language ban on waste imports in 2018 compelled South Korea to handle vital volumes of plastic garbage at house. “It was a wake-up name for many individuals and has sparked a grassroots motion towards plastic waste,” he says.
![A woman sits in the inside area of a South Korean cafe](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F194877af-c7b9-4309-8764-9beeea69ad9f.jpg?fit=scale-down&source=next&width=700)
This has achieved many “small victories” towards client items firms. Hur, for instance, repeated her soy milk tactic with meals firm CJ CheilJedang, forcing it to take away plastic caps from a few of its ham merchandise designed for conventional holidays.
Equally, Brita Korea grew to become the primary Asian subsidiary of the German firm to gather water filters for recycling after customers despatched a whole bunch of them again to the corporate.
Campaigners have additionally focused cosmetics producers, together with AmorePacific, whose representatives pledged final yr — following a protest held in entrance of its Seoul headquarters — that it might attempt to remove non-recyclable packaging by 2030. In the meantime, Starbucks Korea introduced final yr that it might make each retailer plastic-free by 2025 — the chain’s first transfer of this type.
Extra tales from this report
An additional signal of customers’ rising eco-consciousness is the nationwide proliferation of zero-waste retailers, the place clients carry their very own containers for merchandise starting from shampoo and detergent to olive oil and low beans.
Ko Kum-sook, who runs certainly one of Seoul’s 200 zero-waste retailers, says about 80 per cent of her clients are girls of their 20s and 30s. “They’re the technology most fascinated with moral consumption whereas Korean society, generally, continues to be targeted on financial effectivity.”
A latest survey by Korea Chamber of Commerce and Trade discovered that 65 per cent of South Korean millennials and Technology Z — born, respectively, between the early Nineteen Eighties and mid-Nineteen Nineties, and the mid-Nineteen Nineties and early 2010s — are extra involved with moral consumption than value. This contrasts with the earlier technology’s preoccupation with value.
However this eco-consciousness seems to have limits. Plastic use surged through the pandemic, as individuals turned to on-line purchasing and takeaways. And, though some progress has been made on the retail entrance, South Korea’s export-driven financial system stays largely depending on carbon-intensive heavy business and manufacturing.
“Individuals are not discussing elementary options resembling accelerating industrial restructuring or increasing renewable power manufacturing, [because they are] involved in regards to the enormous transition value and potential job losses,” Ko says. “Nobody desires to endure the ache.”
Activists warn that the nation nonetheless has a protracted solution to go to attain its objective of changing into carbon impartial by 2050. They warn that, whereas the marketing campaign to cut back use of plastics helps scale back greenhouse fuel emissions, it’s a drop within the ocean within the struggle towards local weather change.
They’re additionally involved the nation’s new conservative president, Yoon Suk-yeol, who has emphasised his business-friendly financial insurance policies, might roll again environmental rules.
“The setting coverage is prone to go backwards below the brand new administration,” says Heo Seung-eun at Inexperienced Korea, an environmental activism group.
“Corporations must assume extra about recycling from the manufacturing stage, however modifications are coming slowly, in contrast with customers’ enhanced environmental consciousness.”
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