Sustainable urban waste management system in Metropolitan Seoul, South Korea

Solid waste or garbage from households and small businesses is managed by a challengeable system in Metropolitan Seoul, South Korea. It is known as the Seoul Volume-based Garbage Collection Fee (VGCF) system. Unlike the preceding system, which charged waste generators a fee for waste disposal in proportion to their property taxes, this newly designed system, which came into full effect in 1995, charges a fee according to the amount of garbage. Seoul VGCF system was introduced according to two theoretical principles: (1) public service ‘coproduction’-cooperative production between citizen and city government-principle or citizen volunteerism; and (2) ‘polluter-pays’ principle or pay-as-you-throw. Thus, this system is characterized by two disparately oriented policies. The first of these is that “recyclable materials voluntarily sorted by residents, which are curbside collected at no cost by city government.” The other is “the garbage disposal bag collection fee is charged to residents by city government according to the garbage collection volume.” In metropolitan Seoul this system successfully reduced per capita waste disposal from 1.3kg in 1994 to 0.9kg in 2000, while at the same time it increased the amount of recycled materials.