The Secret to Controlling Urban Odors with 'Vibration'? Sangju City, Gyeongbuk Deploys Vibrating Harvester for 'Eunhaeng Yulmae' Collection

In Sangju-si, Gyeongbuk, ginkgo fruits are being harvested using a shaker harvester.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Kim Yong-woo] Catch the urban foul odor!

Gyeongbuk Sangju City attracts attention by using 'vibration' as a clever way to eliminate the smell of ginkgo fruits.

Sangju City introduced a vibration harvester for the first time this year to eliminate the foul odor caused by ginkgo tree fruits in autumn and reduce citizen inconvenience, starting the ginkgo fruit harvesting operation from the 14th.

The ginkgo tree, which colors the city yellow in autumn, is resistant to pests and pollution, making it suitable as a street tree. However, when the fruits fall from the female ginkgo trees, they emit a foul smell.

The discomfort does not end there. The fallen fruits leave dirty stains on the ground, spoiling the city’s aesthetics and causing headaches. Every year around this time, complaints such as "The streets are dirty, please clean them" flood in.

Sangju City decided to shorten the harvesting period by introducing a vibration harvester. The vibration harvester is equipment that shakes the tree to drop the fruits, causing minimal damage to the tree and drastically reducing the working time compared to manual harvesting.

Sangju City set the period around Chuseok as the intensive harvesting time and plans to prioritize harvesting in areas expected to cause citizen inconvenience, such as downtown Sangsan-ro, Gyeongsang-daero, around the bus terminal, crosswalks, and shopping districts. The harvesting work across the entire Sangju area is expected to be completed by the end of November.

Kim Sang-young, head of the Forest and Greenery Division, said, “We will quickly harvest the ginkgo fruits to reduce citizen inconvenience such as foul odors.”

Among the approximately 33,500 street trees in Sangju City, about 4,600 are ginkgo trees, accounting for 14%. Of the 1,524 trees in the nine harvesting target sections, 593 are female trees bearing fruits, making up 39%.

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