Pay as You Trash

为控制食物浪费，韩国政府推出了一项特别举措——为食物垃圾买单。民众需要单独归类食物垃圾并倾倒在集中垃圾箱里,但要想打开垃圾箱，居民得按重量交费！ Pay as You Trash In a bid to control the growing food waste problem, the South Korean government has started a unique initiative — Pay as You Trash. Residents are required to separate their food waste from the rest of their trash and dump it separately in a bin. And in order to access the bin, they actually need to pay by the kilo. So far, the South Korean government has three methods to charge for the food thrown away. One is through a Radio Frequency Identification card. When users tap this card, embedded with their personal tags, over a specially designed food waste bin, the lid will open, allowing them to dump their food waste. This waste is automatically weighed and recorded in the users’ accounts. Users need to settle their bills on a monthly basis. Each Radio Frequency Identification bin can cater to 60 households. The second billing method is through prepaid garbage bags. These specially designed bags are priced based on volume. There is also a bar code management system in place, in which residents deposit food waste directly into composting bins and pay for it by buying bar code stickers attached to the bin. Nearly every residential complex in South Korean is equipped with one of these three payment systems. Even before the pay-by-weight system was introduced, South Koreans were already charged for food waste. The cost was simply divided equally among the residents of each apartment block. The new system is not only fair, but is also designed to make people really feel the bad influence of excessive waste. The more food they toss out, the more they end up paying. “I think it’s a good idea,” said housewife Cho Sung Ja, “because people start to pay more attention to how much trash they throw and there is now less food waste and the trash bin area has become cleaner, too.” Restaurants and other food-based businesses are also actively trying to reduce their pay-by-weight disposal bills by the food waste processor — a machine that converts food scraps into dried powder that can be used as fertilizer. Some restaurants are actively trying to reduce the amount of food they waste by donating leftovers to the poor and the hungry.