Food waste is converted into animal feed, fertiliser and fuel for heating homes. Read more at straitstimes.com.
SEOUL – Around the world, most of the 2.5 billion tonnes of food thrown away each year goes to landfills. As the food rots, it pollutes water and soil and releases huge amounts of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
While a number of cities have comparable programmes, few if any other countries do what South Korea does on a national scale. That is because of the cost, said Dr Paul West, a senior scientist with Project Drawdown, a research group that studies ways to reduce carbon emissions. Although individuals and businesses pay a small fee to discard food waste, the programme costs South Korea about US$600 million a year, according to the country’s Ministry of Environment.
Political support for changing that was driven by people living near landfills, who complained about the smells, said Dr Kee-Young Yoo, a researcher at the government-run Seoul Institute who has advised cities on handling food waste. Because stews are a staple of Korean cuisine, discarded food here tends to have high water content, which means greater volume and worse odours.Since 2005, it’s been illegal to send food waste to landfills.
Lee Hae-yeon adding a sticker to the food waste container outside his restaurant in Seoul. PHOTO: NYTIMES Then the waste is baked and dehydrated. The moisture goes into pipes leading to a water treatment plant, where some of it is used to produce biogas. The rest is purified and discharged into a nearby stream.
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