In South Korea, meals are often served with a variety of small side dishes called ‘banchan’ - specialty side dishes that include everything from cooked rice, soup, kimchi, bulgogi, beans and potato pancakes. Since the main dish alone can be quite filling, this variety of side dishes often leads to food waste. 

In many countries, leftovers from such meals would be thrown away, contributing to the staggering 2.5 billion tonnes of food waste generated worldwide each year. In Australia alone, approximately 7.6 million tonnes of food are wasted across the food supply chain. 

In South Korea, however, leftovers are carefully sorted and recycled instead of being thrown away. According to restaurant manager Kim Young-Hee from Seoul, “we separate leftovers into special bags and put them in a designated bin outside. After paying a fee, garbage collectors take it away.” 

South Korea manages around 5 million tonnes of food waste annually with the aim to reduce waste and cut greenhouse gas emissions. At food processing plants, food waste is ground up, dried and turned into animal feed and fertiliser. 

To reach this milestone, the South Korean government introduced fines for improper disposal of food waste. Citizens use prepaid cards to track their composting habits and pay based on the weight of their waste.  

Lee Seo-Un, a local resident, explains that she taps her card to open the compost bin and carefully manages food waste because they are charged based on its weight. Each trip to the machine costs just a few cents, and with the average family spending around $8.8 a month on composting, she found herself becoming more conscious of meal preparation. 

Despite the success of this system, non-compostable items occasionally end up in the bins, causing machinery issues or producing low-quality animal feed. In response, the government is focusing more on biogas centres, which convert food waste into energy. The Daejeon Bioenergy Center, one of 300 such facilities, generates green energy for about 20,000 households. 

South Korea’s success in recycling food waste not only demonstrates an effective way to turn waste into valuable resources but also highlights how we can be more mindful of our food waste. Visit Recycling Near You to learn more about recycling food scraps in Australia. 

Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.