South Korea, in particular, wants to reuse or repurpose most waste produced by the population. South Korea is a small country, so it would fill up in no time if everyone just put their trash in landfills. While certain forms of waste will break down over time, others -- like plastic -- can take longer than a human lifespan to break down. Therefore, a plan is needed to deal with all forms of waste possible.
First, let's break down the waste system into two groups that we are familiar with: garbage and recycling. Garbage can then be broken down into two more groups: trash to be burned (incinerable waste) and food waste. Things like fruit peels, cores, leftover dinner that you didn't finish eating, anything edible is disposed of separately from regular garbage. Food waste is then taken and processed into feed for livestock. Noteably, things like bones and shells are not considered food waste because they cannot be consumed. Due to the need to process the food waste into feed, depending on the area you live in, you either need to buy food waste-specific bags to dispose of your food waste or you need to pay to put your food waste into a disposal machine. The price to dispose of food waste in either bags or machines is only a few cents per kilogram, so you do not need to worry about the price. Incinerable waste can be considered anything that is not food waste and not recyclable. But what is recyclable?
There are many categories of recycling: milk cartons, plastic, PET bottles, vinyl, paper, cans, glass bottles, clear glass bottles, etc.
