Skip to content
CircularJourney

East Asia — 2028

South Korea

South Korea prices household waste by volume and weight, including a national food waste separation requirement. It is one of the few places where the price signal reaches the individual household directly.
Future missionUnder consideration for a later phase of the programme.

Research question

What happens to household behaviour, and to illegal dumping, when waste is priced at the door?

Written before the mission, and published unchanged. Findings are assessed against this question rather than the question being rewritten to fit the findings.

Research scope

Charging households by the kilo

What we want to understand

  1. 01How volume-based pricing is administered and enforced.
  2. 02Whether pricing reduced waste generated, or mainly moved it.
  3. 03How food waste is separated, collected and processed at national scale.
  4. 04What the scheme costs to run relative to what it recovers.
  5. 05How low-income households are protected from the price signal.
Region
East Asia
Research lens
01 · Advanced systemsWhat has been built here, and what makes it work?
Research theme
Volume-based pricing and food waste separation
Field research
Planned for 2028
Framework themes
economicspolicyfood wastecitizen behavioursegregationindia applicability
Relevant SDGs
SDG 11SDG 12

Cities

South Korea

Seoul

Volume-based household waste charging and separate food waste collection, operated across a dense metropolitan population.

Future mission

Missions

No mission scheduled

This country is on the roadmap but no mission has been planned in detail yet.

Findings

No findings yet

Field research in South Korea is future mission. This section stays empty until there is something we have actually seen. The questions above are what we will be asking.

What India could take from South Korea

Assessment pending

Any judgement about transfer to India would be speculation until the system has been seen working, and its costs and dependencies understood. Anything published here will be labelled as a proposal until a pilot reports.

What South Korea could take from India

Nothing has been researched yet, so nothing is claimed. These are the parts of India’s experience we expect to be worth putting in front of practitioners here, and what we will ask them about.

  • Recovery in cities where volumetric charging and enforcement are not yet feasible.
  • How repair and reuse persist commercially rather than as policy programmes.

Read the reasoning on why this is a two-way journey.

Case studies

SeoulPlanned

Volume-based household waste pricing, South Korea

Households pay for residual waste disposal by volume, through prescribed bags or metered food waste bins, so the cost of disposal is felt at the point of disposal.

municipal solid wastefood

Film and clips

Nothing filmed yet

Filming follows the field visit. Clip subjects are planned in advance and listed on the clips page.

Notices

Organizations and experts

Directory not yet open

We list an organization only once it has agreed to a public listing, and a person only with their consent. Outreach for this mission is under way; entries appear here as permissions come back.Take part