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Aim is to familiarize people with circular economy
By Ko Dong-hwan
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| The official poster for a recycling technology exhibition to be held at Seoul Square on Thursday / Courtesy of Seoul Metropolitan Government |
The one-day event at Seoul Plaza in front of Seoul City Hall will feature over 40 booths created by some 20 companies, social enterprises and cooperatives specializing in recycling.
In one section, visitors will find robots separating waste according to material. Visitors will also be introduced to pyrolysis, a heating method to dismantle bio-polymers, and see the latest products made with coffee grounds and used PET bottles.
Another program offered at the exhibition by a scrap metal recycling center in Seoul's Seongbuk District will give visitors a chance to make their own magnets using trashed keyboards.
Korea Resource Circulation Service Agency and Korea Packaging Recycling Cooperative will hold pop quizzes challenging visitors' knowledge of proper recycling.
In another section, new gadgets like an AI-run multi-use cup dispenser, a table made out of dumped vehicles and a chair created with waste cardboard boxes will be on display to showcase new recycling technologies.
Occupying a spot inside Seoul Plaza will be a specially constructed plastic monster that has been assembled with 102 plastic cups, 568 plastic containers used for food delivery, 109 PET bottles for drinking water and 533 plastic bags.
Those figures represent the average plastic footprint by an individual in 2020 according to a 2023 report by Greenpeace Korea. The Resource Recirculation Division under the city government's Climate and Environment Headquarters, which oversees the event, said the monster was built to tell visitors that what you consume will come back to haunt you.
Celebrating the country's national Recycling Day on Wednesday, the event will also feature a special cafe where visitors who bring their own tumblers get free coffee or other beverages. Visitors who leave a note at the cafe reminding others to stop using disposable cups can receive one of the 500 mini-sized flower pot giveaways courtesy of the city authority.
Kim Kwon-gi at the Resource Recirculation Division said that reducing and recycling plastic waste is an inevitable step toward achieving a circular economy.
"The exhibition will hopefully encourage visitors to recognize waste as stepping stones toward realizing qualitative growth in the city's resource circulation efforts," said Kim.
The exhibition runs from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and the cafe will hand out free beverages to visitors bringing tumblers from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
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