Small-scale and moving-in households’ inconvenience in using volume-based waste disposal bags will be resolved. 

Volume-based waste fee system for domestic waste generated in markets, shopping areas and business facilities will be strengthened.

Collection procedure for managing the safety of waste medication will be simplified.

The Ministry of Environment (Minister Yoon Seong-kyu) will improve the Volume-based Waste Fee system (VBWF) which has been operated nationwide for 20 years since 1995 with an aim to close the loopholes in the system, reduce the waste volume and increase recyclable resources.

The ministry will implement the improved enforcement regulations of VBWF from August 7 to mitigate citizen’s inconvenience, considering the social and economic changes as the system is in place every day.

First, considering the volume of waste generated by small-scale households consisting of one or two persons, the size of reusable waste disposal bags which used to be divided into 10 ℓ and 20 ℓ will be subdivided to smaller sizes (3 ℓ and 5 ℓ) and be sold in small wholesale stores such as supermarket and convenient store.

And, citizen’s inconvenience that they could not use disposal bags issued by the former district office when moving into a new district will be relieved. When a person makes a moving-in report, the district office will put labeling stickers on the existing garbage bags or exchange them with new bags for a certain amount (up to 1 bundle of bags or 10 bags) to allow new residents to use the existing garbage bags issued by the former district office.

The real-name system for domestic waste generators will be adopted to reinforce the VBWF system for domestic waste in industrial sites such as shopping areas, business facilities as well as production, manufacturing and service facilities and to facilitate separate discharge of waste in the non-household sector. 

The system is aimed at inducing voluntary waste separation and discharge by industrial sites that have a relatively low separate discharge rate by introducing the real-name system, so that it would prevent mixed discharge of recyclable and non-recyclable waste.

※As of 2013, separate discharge (recyclables+ food waste) rate of household domestic waste was 56.9%, while industrial domestic waste stood at 41.4%.

In addition, the weight of garbage that can be contained in 100 ℓ bag will be limited to less than 25kg to avoid the use of illegal waste compressor in industrial sites and impose the discharge fee by the garbage weight.

So far, some business operators have used illegal waste compressor to discharge excessively heavy garbage bags, which caused musculoskeletal diseased such as shoulder discomfort of sanitation workers.

An issue regarding collection of waste medication that is guided to be separately discharged through pharmacy has been raised that waste medications are piling up at community health centers. Thus, the collection system will be simplified to have the local governments directly visit and collect waste medication without going through designated storage places once a month for safe collection system of waste medication

The Ministry of Environment expects that the systematic improvement will contribute to resolving citizen’s inconvenience in discharging waste and facilitating efficient use of resources by encouraging separate discharge of waste. 

The Ministry will continuously collect opinions and promote policies for implementing the system tailored to the local government’s circumstances by actively informing the local governments of the revised enforcement regulations of VBWF for smooth implementation and awarding outstanding local governments for best practices.

Moreover, the ministry will consider the fiscal self-reliance rate and the level of improvement in resident’s burden rate when evaluating local governments to encourage the local authorities’ effort for enhancing the efficiency of clean-up activities and the realization of clean-up budget

In particular, the ministry will expand subsidy for the local governments to reduce clean-up costs by supporting the installation of community recycling center.

※As of 2013, the nationwide average fiscal self-reliance rate was 26% and the resident’s burden rate was 24.9%.

VBWF, introduced in 1995, has created an effect to cut waste disposal costs and increase the recycling of resources by reducing the amount of domestic waste generation.

According to Korea Environment Institute (KEI), the economic value generated from VBWF from 1995 to 2013 amounts to 21 trillion and 353 billion won.