Gwangju Seobu Wholesale Market, Performance Improvement of Waste Disposal Facilities Underway

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] On the 20th, Gwangju Metropolitan City Western Agricultural and Marine Products Wholesale Market announced that it will invest 200 million KRW to improve the performance of outdated machinery and equipment for the disposal of plant-based waste generated from agricultural products.

The agricultural products distributed at the Western Wholesale Market amount to approximately 230,000 tons annually, generating an average of 1,320㎥ of plant-based waste per year, with disposal costs reaching 132 million KRW.

Until now, waste from high-moisture fruits and vegetables could not have their moisture content reduced through fine crushing and dehydration methods, so they were treated by natural drying to remove moisture. This caused difficulties in management due to odors from leachate.

The Western Agricultural and Marine Products Wholesale Market plans to address this issue by improving performance with a screw press compression facility, reducing the moisture content of agricultural waste from 40% to the 20% range, thereby reducing plant-based waste by 30%.

In particular, the byproducts generated can be immediately used as compost, which is expected to result in cost savings of approximately 35 million KRW.

Nam Taek-song, the manager of the Western Agricultural and Marine Products Wholesale Market Management Office, stated, “We will continuously maintain the outdated facilities to provide safe food to citizens and create a pleasant wholesale market environment.”

Meanwhile, last year, by promoting to producers and local distributors to package peel and stem agricultural products such as onions, green onions, and napa cabbage in mesh bags, they succeeded in reducing 83 tons of waste generated from agricultural products.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.