I’m still new to Korea and don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to dispose of garbage. But one thing I do know is that there is a rigid recycling regulation enforced by the Korean government.

According to a recent BBC report, South Korea is trying to use 2% of its GDP to enhance its green initiatives, and I can see the effort in our everyday life in Korea.

As far as I’m aware, there are six or seven waste item categories that garbage needs to be sorted by before being disposed. These categories include plastic bottles, glass, regular plastic wastes, metal, newspaper, cardboard and food. I haven’t confirmed this yet, but it seems that food wastes have to be further sorted by (1) food with bones or (2) food without bones.

Luckily, our apartment building is sort of exempt from the rules. That’s what I thought when we moved in. But there really isn’t such a thing as exempt. In fact, the apartment management hired a couple of “garbage sorters” for us. They sit at the garbage collection area on the basement and open every single disposed bag and sort them out for us. They even have to open a bag I put my baby’s used diapers in. What a job!

This reminds me of a friend of mine who lives in a large apartment complex and shared a funny story with me. One morning she found her disposed garbage bag returned to her door. As she’s also new to Korea, she didn’t sort her food waste properly. The person in charge of the building reviewed all disposed bags, identified the owner and returned it to her door.

Maybe there is no soup Nazi in Korea, but there sure is a garbage Nazi!

<About a guest blogger>

Akiko Ono Mueller

She was born, raised in Tokyo and moved to NYC in 1998 as an internal transfer from a British IT company. She felt comfortable living there, extended the contract, met her husband and had a baby girl in 2011. Currently she’s living in Incheon, Korea and working for Songdo global university foundation as an international marketing director. She has BA from Waseda University and MS from New York University.