Gwangju City: "Please Separate Transparent PET Bottles from Other Plastics"

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Jin-hyung] Gwangju Metropolitan City is implementing various support policies to ensure conditions for separate disposal following the Ministry of Environment's guideline revision, which expanded the application of 'separate disposal of transparent PET bottles' from apartment complexes last December to all areas including single-family homes and commercial buildings.

Transparent PET bottles are a high-quality resource from which one short-sleeved shirt can be made from 18 bottles of 500ml, but recycling has become difficult as they are mixed with plastic, leading to imports.

Accordingly, the government is implementing a separate disposal system to solve this problem nationally.

Gwangju City installed separate collection bins in about 800 apartment complexes last year and plans to install about 700 additional bins this year to increase separate disposal in single-family homes and commercial buildings, which will be fully implemented from next year after a guidance period.

The city will also install 10 more Recycling Neighborhood Yard (Clean Houses), which are recycling collection base facilities with collection bins, operating a total of 35 locations, and will operate 15 unmanned transparent PET bottle collection machines by installing more than 5 additional units, which collected 60 tons last year.

The current 55 recycling collection vehicles will be increased by 6 to assist efficient collection, and a separate sorting line for transparent PET bottles will be installed at the public sorting center.

In this regard, Dong-gu and Gwangsan-gu produced and distributed 120,000 and 1.01 million transparent PET bottle exclusive bags respectively, and Seo-gu will provide a 10-liter volume-based waste bag as compensation for every 30 PET bottles at the Dong Administrative Welfare Center starting in May (Gwangsan-gu does this once or twice a month). Buk-gu expanded 6 Recycling Neighborhood Yards, and Nam-gu is promoting dedicated PET bottle collection through a day-specific disposal system that collects transparent PET bottles every Friday.

Along with support from autonomous districts, Gwangju City plans to continuously conduct various promotional activities to change citizens' awareness, such as increasing resource circulation education for citizens, distributing separate disposal promotional materials, broadcasting promotional videos through media outlets, large electronic billboards, and official social network services (SNS) of Gwangju City and autonomous districts.

Son In-gyu, head of the Resource Circulation Division, said on the 25th, "Currently, autonomous districts are accepting applications from homeowners for the installation of separate collection bins, but there is much concern about illegal dumping of waste," and added, "Since transparent PET bottles are valuable resources used for making clothes or bags, we ask for active cooperation in installing separate collection bins and separate disposal."

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