Gwangju Innovation Promotion Committee Confirms and Recommends 'Practice of Using Reusable Items and Improvement of Committee Operations'

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] The Innovation Promotion Committee directly under the Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City (Chairman Ju Jeong-min, hereinafter referred to as the Innovation Promotion Committee) held a plenary meeting in the city hall's medium conference room on the 29th and finalized the 'Creating an Eco-friendly Culture through the Practice of Using Reusable Products' and 'Improvement of Substantial Committee Operation,' recommending them to the city on the 30th.

This proposal comes in response to the serious environmental issues caused by the surge in single-use product consumption due to prolonged COVID-19 and non-face-to-face consumption such as packaging and delivery, as well as the need to reduce administrative costs due to low meeting performance or committees performing similar or overlapping functions among all city committees.

First, the main content of the 'Creating an Eco-friendly Culture through the Practice of Using Reusable Products' includes making the public institutions lead by example to create a 'Single-use Product-Free Government Building' by completely banning the use of single-use products in offices and various meetings within the government building.

To reduce the high brokerage fees in the delivery app market and ease the burden on local small business owners, the operation of the 'Gwangju Public Delivery App' currently in effect will be improved to allow customers to choose whether to receive single-use products, and administrative and financial incentives will be provided to suppliers and consumers using reusable containers.

Long-term support measures will be sought, such as discovering and nurturing reusable container rental companies, and active public promotion will be conducted to eliminate psychological anxiety about using reusable products and induce voluntary participation from citizens.

The 'Improvement Plan for Substantial Committee Operation' allows for diverse citizen participation in committees where citizen involvement is possible, moving away from expert-centered committee composition, and establishes a talent pool through open recruitment to expand private expert participation.

Experts in fields reflecting Gwangju City's characteristics, such as culture and human rights, will be appointed and actively utilized, and before appointing committee members for each committee, the general department will strengthen the procedures for checking reappointment and overlapping participation and reflect the results.

The general department of the committee will analyze the operation status of committees annually and actively consider abolishing committees that have achieved their purpose, whose necessity has decreased, or that have had poor meeting performance for a long time, and will consolidate committees with similar or overlapping functions.

When establishing new committees, similar committees will be utilized, integrated committees at the department or bureau level will be operated, a sunset system for committees will be introduced to automatically abolish them upon achieving their installation purpose, and the use of online operation systems will be activated to strengthen monitoring and feedback systems to ensure substantial operation.

Chairman Ju Jeong-min of the Innovation Promotion Committee said, “To achieve a carbon-neutral city, public officials must take the lead in using reusable products to spread a culture of eradicating single-use products,” and added, “We recommended to the city to operate committees substantially to reduce administrative costs caused by various committees in Gwangju and improve efficiency.”

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