Singapore's Union-Tribune website recently reported that South Korea's consumption of single-use plastic products is huge. During the epidemic, more people in Korea are turning to take-out and online shopping as they are generally going out less. This has led to a huge increase in the use of plastic products such as disposable packaging and take-out boxes in Korea, and the disposal of plastic waste has once again become a hot topic in Korean society.
In 2018, South Korea produced about 3,229,594,400 tons of plastic waste nationwide, an increase of 71.7% in the last 10 years, according to the Ministry of Environment. Due to the epidemic, plastic waste production last year increased by 14.6% compared to the previous year.
Kim Kyung-min, an investigator with the Environmental Labor Group of the Legislative Investigation Division of the National Assembly of Korea, pointed out that "Korea has a well-developed take-out culture, but while express delivery and take-out bring convenience, they also generate a large amount of packaging waste. The 2020 epidemic has even led to a further increase in packaging material waste, exacerbating the problem of plastic waste disposal."
According to the European Plastics and Rubber Producers Association in 2016, South Korea consumed about 132.6 kg of plastic per capita in 2015, and among the 63 countries and regions surveyed, only Belgium (170.9 kg) and Taiwan, China (141.9 kg) consumed more plastic than South Korea.
South Korea's civil society group "Resource Recycling Society Alliance" revealed that in 2015, South Korea used 420 plastic bags per person per year, 100 times more than Finland.
