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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  ...

S uwon is a city where it cherishes and preserves its historical background while showing a refined beauty as a new town with the biggest scale of a lake in a city in Korea. The city is harmonized with the past, the present, and the future and it has been keen to accomplish citizen ’ s sustainable life. As a part of it, they started a project titled ‘ GREEN TAG TOGETHER ’ to manage trees properly in the city this year. More importantly, this GREEN TAG project is the collaboration work with rePAPER ’ s environment-friendly technology. Lets ’ find out the details! Public Plant Management with rePAPER ’ s Eco-friendly Biodegradable Paper! Suwon city decided to introduce eco-friendly GREEN TAG to manage the trees planted throughout the city in a more efficient way. They first considered using a regular tree tag, but its high cost and heavyweight were not approved to be effective. Therefore, they looked for a material that would be harmless to the environment and ensure easy and continuou...

  When the autumn sky was beautifully clear and high, Jeju Olle Walking Festival began its 23-day journey on October 23rd. As rePAPER has closely been connected with Jeju Olle Foundation for SEBAU campaign, we visited Jeju island to sponsor the festival with our environment-friendly products as well as to discuss the SEBAU campaign. After arriving at Jeju on November 13 th , rePAPER’s marketing team had a meeting for the campaign with the team of Jeju Olle Organization, president Ahn, the managing director Mr. Lee, and Mr. Ko, the researcher, at Jeju Olle Tourist Center located in Seoqwipo-si. The SEBAU campaign is intended to complete the resource circulation cycle, enhancing the value of the disposed resource that it can be a promising suggestion for those who are struggling with plastic waste. We grasped the current situation of the SEBAU campaign and discussed the ways to draw more meaning results. The next day, we headed to the route 5 of Olle trails to join the walking ...

As the world has become more aware of how closely we are connected to nature, each country starts to implement resolute policies to stop pollution and preserve what is left. Among them, California is surely the leading state in the U.S. to act fastest for the environment. The European Commission passed the introduction of the plastic tax in 27 member countries and China recently announced a stringent regulatory policy to limit the production and sale of undegradable single-use plastic by stages.   While California strives for the sustainable society by emphasizing eco-friendly consumption, they introduced more delicate and specific legislation in late September, setting stringent standards and requirement to promote a product’s material and organic recyclability. Let’s take a close look at California’s effort to achieve the resource circulation cycle.   1. ‘Biodegradable’ Product? Prove it with accurate data first! The state of California announced the legislation ...

  ASEIC, ASEM Eco-Innovation Center held the second Ecothon on October 7th. Let’s take a close look on the program pursuing global sustainability and its host institution, shall we? ASEIC and Ecothon ASEIC is an international cooperation organization established in 2011 to promote the sustainable growth of SMEs of the 51 countries in membership in Asia and Europe and is jointly operated by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups in Korea. Among various cooperative projects, ASEIC designed the Ecothon, a business starter competition, to support less developed countries with institutional and economical resource to spread the awareness on ‘SCP: Sustainable Consumption and Production’. It was first held in Cambodia last year.   This program is subjected to a prep entrepreneur or a start-up at the beginning stage. Ecothon collects innovative ideas in regard to SCP and provides supports to develop these ideas to make it more practical. It includes lectures on entrepreneurship and...

We can easily spot ‘biodegradable’ products anywhere these days. Due to the climate change and the pandemic resulted from the pollution, environment-friendly property of a product has influenced a customer’s purchase decision more than ever. Generally, the word ‘biodegrade’ means that a material is degraded or decomposed by microbes such as molds or bacteria. Paper, woods, flowers, fruits, and fish shall be the most common examples as biodegradable materials. However, did you know that a plastic cup, a diaper, and even metal can be degradable, too? The only problem would be that it takes decades or even centuries to be so. Although corrosion by light, wind, or water is also a part of decomposition, today we will focus on materials’ degradability occurred by temperature, oxygen, and microbes. First, let’s find out what these two familiar, but confusing words, ‘biodegradable’ and ‘compostable’ exactly mean! The Difference Between Degradable and Compostable As the environmental awaren...

Do you remember when fresh-cut fruits and vegetables were first introduced? These products were considered as representatives that show the values that young generation prioritize the most, efficiency and convenience. Well, now customers go to a mart to purchase cuisine instead of choosing every ingredient. If you can’t find a time to go shopping, a few clicks will deliver delicious HMR foods right to your front door in the early next morning. What is HMR? Korea Agro-Fisheries& Food Trade Corporation, hereinafter aT, defined HMR (Home Meal Replacement) as ready-made products that can be served as a decent meal with simple steps of cooking. Depending on the necessity of cooking or heating, products are usually categorized into 3 groups, RTE, RTH, and RTC. Soaring HMR Market According to aT’s ‘Report on Segment of Processed Food’, the domestic HMR market size was reported to be 3.4 billion dollars in 2019. It is expected to continuously growing to over 4.1 billion dollars b...