Seoul to charge 30 cents for single-use cups at cafes from 2025
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Besides coffee shops, public facilities such as cinemas and stadiums will also be required to use reusable cups.
PHOTO: PEXELS
SEOUL - To reduce waste and increase rates of recycling, the Seoul Metropolitan Government will impose a 300 won (30 Singapore cents) surcharge for each single-use cup used in coffee shops in the city, starting in 2025.
Seoul’s disposable cup deposit system will draw insights from programmes now operating in the city of Sejong and on Jeju Island.
Both these programmes require customers to pay a 300 won deposit when buying a drink in a single-use cup. Customers can return their used cups and retrieve their deposits through a mobile application run by the Container Deposit System Management Organisation.
Seoul will work with the Ministry of Environment to select optimal businesses to implement the system and devise efficient operational procedures.
On Friday, the Seoul Metropolitan Government also introduced a pilot programme where customers are offered a 300 won discount on drinks if they bring their own cups to coffee houses.
The discount provided by Seoul will be given on top of existing discounts offered by coffee shops for drinks ordered in personal cups.
The programme will be piloted in 100 coffee shops across Seoul until Nov 30.
Coffee shops in large buildings that generate more than 300kg of plastic waste a day will be encouraged to adopt reusable cups.
Other public facilities such as cinemas and stadiums will also be required to use reusable cups.
Facilities that use large amounts of single-use plastics, such as funeral homes and sports facilities, will be transformed into zero-plastic hubs that use reusable cups and containers.
When Seoul Medical Centre Funeral Hall expanded its use of multi-use containers, its waste levels were reduced by 80 per cent.
Based on this data, Seoul plans to expand the use of multi-use containers to all large medical centres and funeral homes in the city from 2024.
Parks by the Han River and popular outdoor picnic spots in the capital will also prohibit visitors from using disposable containers.
From parks near Jamsu Bridge in 2023 to Ttukseom Hangang Park and Banpo Hangang Park in 2024, all Han River parks will be designated as “zero-plastic zones”.
The Seoul Metropolitan Government also plans to increase the number of sites that separate recycled waste near single-family houses and urban living areas, where most recycled waste is mixed together.
Seoul has 13,000 separation sites in operation now and plans to have 20,000 by 2026.
The city government will actively enforce the recycling of clear plastic bottles separately from their labels, in accordance with an environmental law that came into effect in December 2021.
The city government is also looking into ways of allowing residents to exchange recyclable waste for general waste bags.
Plastic waste generated daily in Seoul increased from 896 tonnes in 2014 to 2,753 tonnes in 2021 – an increase of more than 200 per cent. At this rate, experts expect daily plastic waste to continue to increase by up to 40 per cent in 2026.
With the plan, the Seoul Metropolitan Government expects to see by 2026 a 10 per cent decrease in daily plastic waste from 2,753 tonnes to 2,478 tonnes, and an increase in the recycling rate from 69 per cent to 79 per cent. THE KOREA HERALD/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
