The Revised Repackaging Ban Announced! Korea to be Eco-friendly by Reducing Plastic Packaging

The Ministry of Environment announced the Ban on Repacking on June 18^th in order to reduce the wasted resource by unnecessary packaging. However, there was strong backlash among the industries and consumers as it did not give a clear guide line on the subjects or conditions. Finally, the ministry decided to reexamine the issue and set the standards with more details.

The department organized a consultative body with relevant industries, experts, and consumer groups since last July and released the revised guide line including the specific subjects on September 21^st.

The Government is also planning to apply various policies to decrease the amount of packaging waste. Now, let’s find out more details about the ban on repacking enacted on January of 2021!

Based on the subject list, it can be understood that the regulation focuses on the reduction of synthetic materials, which is plastic packaging. The Ministry of Environment gives a 3-month preparation period to the industries for the switches required. SMEs will be given more time and be affected by the law from July in 2021.

The Revised Repacking Ban, Is Everything Settled Now?

The Ban newly announced provides more advanced and segmented standards. It is the first draft which is driven from the agreement of each field and the government will release the final draft soon. According to the Ministry of Environment, the ban would help reduce 27,000 tonnes of the plastic packaging waste, which covers 8% of the waste produced in 2019.

However, there are still some blind spots. The revised version does not include the packaging waste produced from online service. The untact consumption has increased since the COVID-19 outbreak and the volume of the online business from February to July was accordingly increased by 30% compared to the same period a year ago. Therefore, we can easily think how it would have affected the waste amount of packaging. Yet, the online sales were not considered for the ban this time.

Another exceptional condition of ‘when the repacking is in absolute need for transport, carry, or hygiene’ seems to require more clear range as well. The Ministry added that there are no legal standards for such cases yet in Korea that they will establish a guide line for transport packaging and promote the business to switch the packaging to be more environmentally friendly.

The Reason We Need to Work for the Environment

In order to obtain successful results from the ban on repacking, each customer’s effort should be accompanied along with the movements of paper mills and retailors. We should be able to think back on ourselves whether we are too accustomed to convenient packaging, and should be willing to accept inconvenience. In addition, it is important to sort and place the waste by each material thoroughly. Lastly, each company more actively needs to look for genuine environment-friendly packaging, taking social responsibility.

Perhaps, we may deliberately have ignored the nature losing its life to pursue mere convenience and familiarity. However, it is the time to face the consequence of our selfishness and to gather our willingness and effort to resolve it. The fear towards virus infection has generated much more disposable waste than ever in history. If this continues for any longer, it could be our home that is referred as the second garbage patch. We hope that the repacking ban is able to elicit the switch of Republic of Korea as one of the most sustainable countries in the world.