14 DAY TRIAL // In order to keep streets clean and landfills less crowded in the long term, the Korean government has come up with a new strategy seeking to charge both residents and businesses for the food they discard.
This measure is much needed nowadays, to prevent people from throwing away perfectly edible products, Earth 911 informs.
It seems that 40% of the food supplies end up in landfills from the United States and the United Kingdom annually, and the same situation can be spotted in most of the developed countries.
Surprisingly, the percentage is similar to the one displayed by Korea. Experts indicate various causes for this irresponsible type of conduct: excessive shopping, ignorance, or wasteful 'all you can eat' offers aggressively promoted by restaurants.
The smart high-tech food waste bins designed by SK Telecom are expected to provide a viable solution in this case. They weight the amount of trash with maximum precision, letting residents know how wasteful they really are.
Due to an innovative radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, the bins, equipped with card readers, can also establish the value of the disposal fee, paid by Koreans using a credit card or their public transportation card.
After installing the RFID bins, authorities hope to reduce food waste by up to 20% over the next years.
The Korean cuisine is a delight, but the mess it leaves behind appears to be hard to handle. Under these circumstances, the government is forced to scale up efforts to implement some changes.
According to a disturbing prediction, 50 million Koreans will generate 170,000 tons of trash, by not eating everything they have purchased during a single day.
So far, trash has been properly processed by sewage plants, but this path will no longer be exploited in the near future. Since landfill space appears to be insufficient, new green technologies are expected to solve the problem by 2013.