2nd ANOR NEWSLETTER

by KORRA (2004-07-05)

1. 2004 Spring Seminar of KORRA
2004 Spring symposium of KORRA was held on 23th. of April at Seoul Development Institutein Seoul. This symposium was organized by both KORRA and Environmental Management
Corporation with the title of "New and future technologies on the organic resource recycling inKorea. On this symposium, various new technologies developed by different sized-enterprises
and governmental entities were presented. The revised evaluation system on the newenvironmental technology was also presented by Environmental Management Corporation(EMC), which is one of the governmental evaluation institutes on the environmental
policies. Nine businesses, which recently obtained the certificates on the new environmental
technologies from EMC, talked about the theories and processes of their new technologies
related to the environment.

2. An International Seminar on the Environmental Day
An International seminar was held on 4th. June, 2004 at the National Institute of Environmental
Research (NIER) at the time of the environmental Day. The subject of the seminar was “TheCurrent Status and Future Perspective of Waste Management for a Resource Recycling
Society". About 450 participants including domestic and foreign distinguished quests and aminister of Ministry of Environment were participated. The seminar was on such as wastes
management policy for the resource recycling society, current status on the recycling
technologies of plastic and organic wastes, EPR(extanded producer responsibility) system, newlandfill site-utilizing technology, and the current status of the incinerating and melting
technologies.

3. 2004 Conference of Waste Network of Asia (WNA)
The 4th international conference of Waste Network of Asia (WNA), as a part of Korea's Zero
Waste Movement, has been held for four days from June 21th. to 24th, 2004 inSeoul. Organized by Korea Waste Movement Network (KWMN), one of the famous KoreanNGOs, and sponsored by the Department of Environment, over 300 domestic people and 62
foreigners from 14 countries were participated. They presented and discussed about zero waste

movement in each Asian country, EPR system, each nation's recycling systems, and waste
minimization cases, etc.

4. The current status on the prohibition of direct land-filling of organic sludge○ The article for direct land-filling prohibition of the sludge with over 40% of organic matterhas been stated in a waste management law○ As seen in the table 1, over 2,000 ㎥ amount of sludge per day has not been allowed to landfilling since July 1st, 2003, and the amount between 700 ㎥ to 2000 ㎥ of sludge will be
prohibited from filling up onto the land since Jan. 1st, 2005.
Table 1. Effective times and applicable facilities for a prohibition law of land-filling of the organic waste.
Times

Facilities

2003.7.1

2005.1.1- terminal wastewater treatment facility- livestock wastewater treatment facility- terminal sewage treatment facility- night soil treatment facility- wastewater discharge facility- wastewater discharge facility(over 2000 ㎥ of wastewater)(between 700 ㎥ to 2000 ㎥)○ This prohibition law was legislated primarily for the encouragement of land treatment, but
most of sludge has now been dumped into the ocean due to the lack of the proper system of
the land treatment.
○ Three levels of standards related to ocean dumping have been suggested to reduce theproblems which could be occurred when all sludges would be prevented from oceandumping.
1. High level standard: basically all the hazardous wastes are prohibited from ocean dumping.
2. Middle level standard: ocean dumping is allowed for some periods until proper system ofland treatment is established.
3. Low level standard: only some sludge which can be suitable for ocean dumping is allowed.

5. The prohibition of land-filling of food waste and its recycling policies○ The prevention of land-filling of food waste will be effective since Jan. 1st, 2005, asindicated at the law of waste management.
○ This law will be applied to all the cities or more, and other low-level local autonomousentities are recommended to follow this ordinance. In fact, almost 80% of all regions are
now conducting the action for the recycling of food waste.
○ Most of food waste subjected to this restriction law come from houses and restaurants, andfood waste generated from food manufacturing companies is separately regulated as an
animal and plant-originated material.
○ The daily amount of food waste is about 0.23kg/person in 2004, 63% of these has now been
recycled.

6. Research on the establishment of the integrated management system of organic
waste○ The government's management system of organic waste seems to be unreasonable andineffective in an aspect that its system varies among different governmental departments,
hence with different and duplicable recycling plans and methods on similar organic waste,
really wasting nation's budget.
○ A research to reform this wasteful structure and to lead to the integrated management system
has been performed since last year. On this research, all organic wastes produced in Korea
will thoroughly be analyzed.
○ Through the first-year study, it was found that seventy million tons of waste were produced
last year. The second-year study will focus on the development of the reasonable disposal
and recycling methods of organic waste, and proper assignment of the roles between
different government departments will be suggested for a reasonable waste management.