The little town of Uiseong, in the province of North Gyeongsang, is the latest example of the ongoing avfallskaoset in south Korea. Here, among the rice fields by the river Nakdong is the country’s largest rubbish dump, according to local authorities.
självantände the mountain of 170.000 tonnes of debris and then the air filled with a chemical stench of burning plastic sticking in the eyes and nose, s kriver CNN:s reporter who have visited the resort.
Park Hyun-Soons farm is located at the sopberget and says that all of her greenhouses are covered by a layer of ash which makes it impossible to grow the family’s livelihood: eggplants. Avfallsbranden has turned their lives into a constant pain in the butt.
– We open the almost never our windows and when we go out I just feel the smell from the burning debris. My eyes hurts, my head hurts. All the residents are suffering, ” says Park to CNN.
environmental problems throughout the world and almost half of the engångsartiklarna ends up in the oceans. The most effective way to reduce pollution is how it is dumped. Instead of being fired up can the plastic be recycled and become new products. But, in many cases, fired the only up and becomes fuel.
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In south Korea handled normally all waste in three ways: it is recycled, processed into fuel or burned up. But a series of events in recent years has been the system to collapse.
2017 was the air pollution is so great that the government decided to tighten the rules for the incineration of waste. It resulted in the number of establishments decreased from 611 in 2011 to 395 last year, writes CNN.
the ship överskottsavfallet to China. But at the end of 2017 decided China to tighten its rules around sopimport of a range of substances, such as plastics. The consequence was that south Korea’s exports of plastic waste fell by 90 per cent, which was the streets of Seoul that is quickly being flooded with garbage because sopföretagen refused to take care of them.
today, expect the ministry of the environment that there are approximately 1.2 million tonnes of illegally dumped waste in south Korea.
south Korea is also one of the world’s largest plastkonsumenter. The year 2015 was used it almost 132 kilograms of plastic per capita, which is more than both the USA and China, which is located on the 93 and 58 kilos, according to Euromap.
on plastförbrukningen, the government has banned the engångsplastpåsar in the shops. You should also allow an increased combustion. But environmental organizations such as Greenpeace argue that it is not enough but you also have to get industry to reduce its plastanvändning, writes CNN.
– the Combustion process creates various environmental and health problems such as greenhouse gases and toxic substances. If we increase the number of combustion plants will plastförbrukningen also increase as it becomes easy to just fire it up, ” says Kim Mi-Kyung on Greenpeace to CNN.
south Korea now exports much of its non-recyclable waste to other countries in Southeast asia. But it works also not satisfactory. Recently forced the country to take back tons of garbage from the Philippines because instead of the promised recyclable plastic contained everything from household waste to the broken parts that had been dumped out in the countryside.
has also led to a lucrative black market where it offers the removal of waste at prices below the usual rate – and then dump it in a sparsely populated part of the country. It tells the story of Lee Won-Jeong for CNN, he runs a recycling company and have our own experiences of the problem.
He took over the sopberget in Uiseong, and discovered that the previous owner had received the garbage far in excess of the permitted level of 2,000 tonnes. Now he is forced to put his time trying to extinguish the fire instead of the garbage disposal. It can be up to five years, ” he says.
the Municipality has now started handing out face masks to the residents.
the South Korean government, on its part, has promised that it will be more difficult to dump illegal waste and should put more effort in to track the criminals to deter future dumping.
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