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  The Ministry of Environment and Korea Waste Association established Resource Circulation Day on September 6 th to remind the importance of limited resources and to think of solutions for resource waste. Greeting the 13th Resource Circulation Day this year, we would like to check the current system for resource circulation and necessary changes for it to be expanded and developed.     Disappearing resource due to continuous development Generally speaking, resource refers to natural resources that are generated from nature. They are categorized into two different groups; renewable resources such as forests, water, wind, solar energy that are repeatedly produced over time, and non-renewable resources such as minerals and fossils fuels that do not exist anymore once they are used up. Going through 4 times of industrial revolution, humans are now facing an ICT merging generation after the era of mechanization and mass production. In the meantime, the innovative manu...

Other than rice, bread, and water, what do you think we intake every day?   According to the report released by New Castle University in 2019, we eat plastic that is equivalent to a credit card per week. Plastics produced in 2015 were 320 million tons and 146 million tons of them, accounting for 42%, were used for packaging which mostly ended up in the environment as microplastics. Researchers are warning that these can be a greater threat to the ecosystem than the waste that is easily spotted with our bare eyes. How are the microplastics generated and why should we be alert? We will check the definition of microplastics and their hazardousness and how we should act.   What are microplastics? Microplastics are a term for solid plastic particles with functional additives in a size of 100nm – 5 mm and the term was first used by Dr. Richard Thompson in 2004. Depending on how they are produced, microplastics are categorized into primary plastics and secondary plastics. Primary mi...

In general, we think that the environmental concern and movement start from advanced countries. The major issue of plastic waste these days is also considered the same. It sounds reasonable considering how these countries can afford financial support for proper waste treatment systems and for establishing the resource circulation system. They also provide education and campaigns to enhance community awareness for a sustainable society.   However, the consequence of environmental pollution is not limited to a certain area in the world and it is brought up as a global issue to be solved. This urgently led other countries to involve more actively.   Asia Ever since China stopped the import of plastic waste in 2018, many other countries in the continent started their war against plastics, too. After losing a giant waste dump, advanced countries looked for areas to toss theirs and the amount of much more than one could handle. In the end, countries such as Malaysia, the P...

  The 18 th Seoul Eco Film Festival was held on June 3rd to 9th, which is known to be the largest scale focusing on the environmental issues in Asia and also one of the world’s 3 biggest eco film festivals. It has been moving forward overcoming the difficulty as it is not for the commercial films. This year, it was co-organized by Korean Green Foundation and MBC – one of the leading Korean television and radio network companies - and a celebrity Song Eun Yi, and a film director, Jang Hangjun were appointed as ‘Eco-friend’, representatives for those who pursue eco-friendly life.   All the Aspects of the Festival The slogan of this year’s Seoul Eco Film Festival is ECOvolution, which is a compound word of Eco as in ecosystem and the environment and evolution/revolution as in changes and innovation. Therefore, the word ECOvolution delivers a message that we should accomplish a grand switch for the environment for the future. During the festival, 64 movies were released and...

Recently, every country has been accelerating to finalize and implement the ban on single-use plastics that was at a halt for a while due to the pandemic. As it is reported that 8 million tons of plastic waste is dumped in the ocean every year, it has been destroying the marine ecosystem and has compromised seafood safety. Witnessing beautiful beaches being covered by piles of plastic waste, the world agrees that we need a more fundamental countermeasure. For this reason, rePAPER would like to understand and grasp each country’s approach and effort to solve this plastic pollution issue in the following two episodes. Today, we are going to start with the Americas who lead global economic flow and trend and European countries working for the environment as a unit?   1. Americas’ intense battle against plastic 1) The USA The legislatures of each state in North America began their journey to reduce the use of single-use plastics. As they influence the world's plastic consumption  ...

The use of disposables has been rapidly increased since COVID19 outbreak. Some consumers purchase ‘ environmentally friendly ’ products described as biodegradable or compostable in the belief that they are making a better choice for the environment. But, does our decision really bring the result as we wish and expect? According to Jason Locklin, the director of New Materials Institute of the University of Georgia, expressions like ‘ biodegradable ’ or ‘ compostable ’ confuse not only customers but also experts in the fields, for such products may only be degraded under certain conditions and mess up with recycling stream. Let ’ s take a few examples that are marketed as biodegradable. Can we really trust these products that are supposed to relieve customer ’ s guilt on the use of disposables?   1 st  player It is PLA(Poly Lactic Acid). PLA is made from ingredients mostly extracted from corn starch that it is one of the most well-known environmentally-friendly resi...