Eco Expo Asia 2017: Speeding toward zero

South Korea has demonstrated considerable effort the past several decades to reach its 83.9 percent recycling rate, according to Yang Myung-Sik from that nation’s Ministry of Environment. Yang provided a summary of South Korea’s efforts at a seminar at Eco Expo Asia 2017, which took place in late October in Hong Kong.

Yang credited South Korea’s high-ranking global recycling rate to a series of legislative actions taken by the nation’s government, including two “comprehensive” recycling acts passed in 1986 and 1992; a “pay-as-you-throw” municipal solid waste (MSW) system that started in 1995; a directive to recycle construction and demolition (C&D) scrap that was passed in 2003; and an “action resource circulation,” or circular economy directive, just passed in 2016 that will take effect in January 2018.

The circular economy policy will involve monitoring some 2,400 of South Korea’s largest companies and facilities to ensure they are meeting waste reduction and diversion targets, and it also will include inducements for manufacturers to make recycled-content products. (More information on the policy and other related South Korean policies is available at www.allbaro.or.kr.)

Yang said waste reduction, the recycling of materials and the elimination of landfilling and incineration has been a “very long-term, strategic objective” in South Korea, fueled in part by South Korea’s landfills only having some 13 years of collective time remaining.

As of 2017, the nation is recycling some 83.9 percent of the discarded materials generated within its borders, with just 9.4 percent landfilled and only 6.1 percent incinerated. Yang said waste conversion will be part of South Korea’s future, but operators can choose from 71 such recycling and conversion methods that will be allowed by law.

Antoine Grange, who is CEO of the Asia operations of Paris-based Suez Environnement, said MSW management and recycling “has improved extensively” in the European Union this century, but that shifting from landfilling to recycling “is a long journey.”

Grange said in 2001 there were still 17 EU nations that were sending 75 percent or more of their MSW to landfills, but by 2010 that number had dropped to 11.

He said the number of material recovery facilities (MRFs) in the EU had risen from 371 in 2001 to 459 in 2015, with the amount of material sorted at MRFs rising from 50 million metric tons in 2001 to 86 million metric tons in 2015.

Grange credited the EU’s European Waste Framework directive of 2008 with supplying guidance and support for the increased recycling activity, and said that directive combined with others on packaging, end-of-life vehicles and electronic scrap had all helped bolster the EU’s recycling infrastructure. He also said pay-as-you-throw schemes and landfill taxes had proven to be major recycling incentives in Europe.

Eco Expo Asia 2017 was Oct. 26-29 at the AsiaWorld-Expo convention center in Hong Kong. It was organized by the Hong Kong Trade and Development Council and the Hong Kong office of Germany-based Messe Frankfurt.