“Everyone, when you think of trash, what comes to mind?” When I ask this question in lectures, ten out of ten people talk about trash that goes into garbage bags.
As such, we tend to have a narrow perspective.
I wonder if this narrow perspective on the waste problem has contributed to today's environmental problems, including the climate crisis.


In fact, waste refers not only to solid materials thrown away in volume-based garbage bags, but also to all pollutants emitted by humans.
Carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is gaseous waste, and water pollutants are liquid waste.
The sources of pollutants that end up in the sky, the ocean, and the trash can all come from what humans produce and consume.

--- p.16

Many people are curious about biodegradable plastics.
Cafes use biodegradable plastic cups, and convenience stores use biodegradable vinyl, promoting themselves as being environmentally friendly, but others call it greenwashing (marketing that deceives consumers by disguising itself as eco-friendly), which is confusing.
Moreover, plastic terminology contains many difficult technical terms, which creates a sense of distance.
To properly combat plastic, which is permeating all aspects of our lives, we need to understand what alternative plastics are.
The more you know, the more accurate you will be able to speak clearly without being swayed by corporate marketing.

--- p.54

When we think about the issues of disposable products and packaging, it ultimately goes beyond consumer practices and becomes a problem for companies.
Because if the system doesn't support it, individual efforts are limited.
Companies must take the initiative in designing specific systems to move toward a reusable society.
Even if it takes trial and error.
2018 was the year when consumers stepped up and strongly demanded that the government introduce a deposit system for disposable cups.


The bill was passed in 2020 and is scheduled to take effect in December 2022.
If this system is introduced, it will become inconvenient for both cafes and consumers to use disposable cups.
This is why companies started to implement reusable cup deposit systems without anyone forcing them to do so.
This is why Starbucks launched a reusable cup takeout business in 2021.

--- p.104

When washing 1 kilogram of clothes, acrylic fibers release about 170,000 microplastics, and polyester and cotton blends release about 500,000 microplastics.
This is not a problem of a distant country, but a problem we face right now.
According to the results of a survey conducted by Seoul Metropolitan University, 143 microplastics were detected per 20 liters of Han River water.
According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, about 35 percent of the microplastics released into the world's oceans each year come from the textile washing process.
--- p.125

Starting in 1998, Seoul City began a full-scale pilot project for food waste recycling, and a recycling system was established in stages starting with large cities.
In the beginning, the trend was to make livestock feed from food.
This is the result of a combination of the experience of raising livestock using leftover food and the contemporary need to save foreign currency by replacing feed that had been dependent on imported products.


Then, in 1999, an incident occurred at a farm in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, where cows died en masse after eating feed made from food waste.
At that time, as the mad cow disease problem became serious in Europe, concerns about the use of feed arose and the direction changed to expanding composting facilities.
Since there is no choice but to leave the private feed facilities that were already in operation alone, local government recycling facilities will be installed with a focus on composting facilities.

--- p.140

With about 2 billion tons of household waste generated worldwide each year, e-waste accounts for about 5 percent of that total.
In terms of quantity, it's not a huge problem compared to other waste, but there are reasons to pay attention.
This is precisely because of the qualitative characteristics of electronic waste.
Electronic waste has two conflicting faces.
Although the resource has high value, it contains hazardous substances.
Because the resource value is high, everyone is jumping into recycling, but if hazardous substances are handled incorrectly, it can lead to disaster.
Management is not easy, as it is necessary to block businesses that are only after money and do not have the ability to handle hazardous substances.
--- p.168

How is construction waste being recycled? According to statistics from the Ministry of Environment, the average recycling rate over the past five years has been a whopping 98 percent.
Even if you worry about the amount of waste generated, you can feel reassured when you look at the recycling rate.
Is construction waste truly being recycled as smoothly as the statistics suggest? We need to look beyond the numbers and not be swayed by them.
In statistics, what is counted as recycling refers to the amount brought into a recycler.
Construction waste is mostly chunks of concrete or asphalt.
Recyclers crush this material several times with machines and then recycle it into sand or gravel.
In technical terms, it is called recycled aggregate.


However, not everything that goes into a recycling company is recycled, and not everything made from recycled aggregate is used.
You can also see mountains of unused aggregates piled up around recycling companies.

--- p.197