South Korea's mountain of plastic waste shows limits of recycling

SEOUL — South Korea has won international praise for its recycling efforts, but as it prepares to host talks for a global plastic waste agreement, experts say the country's approach highlights its limits.

When the talks known as INC-5 kick off in Busan next week, debate is expected to centre around whether a UN treaty should seek to limit the amount of plastic being made in the first place.

Opponents of such an approach, including major plastic and petrochemical producers like Saudi Arabia and China, have argued in previous rounds that countries should focus on less contentious topics, such as plastic waste management.

South Korea says that it recycles 73 per cent of its plastic waste, compared to about five to six per cent in the United States, and the country might seem to be a model for a waste management approach.

The bi-monthly MIT Technology Review magazine has rated South Korea as "one of the world's best recycling economies", and the only Asian country out of the top 10 on its Green Future Index in 2022.

But environmental activists and members of the waste management industry say the recycling numbers don't tell the whole story.

South Korea's claimed rate of 73 per cent "is a false number, because it just counts plastic waste that arrived at the recycling screening facility - whether it is recycled, incinerated, or landfilled afterward, we don't know," said Seo Hee-won, a researcher at local activist group Climate Change Center.

Greenpeace estimates South Korea recycles only 27 per cent of its total plastic waste. The environment ministry says the definition of waste, recycling methods and statistical calculation vary from country to country, making it difficult to evaluate uniformly.

South Korea's plastic waste