By jlee4946
Having been born and raised in a traditionally Korean household, there weren't too many things that were culturally shocking when I arrived in Korea. However, since this is my first time really living in Korea for an extended period of time and not staying with relatives, I've gotten to know what it really is like living in Korea. I didn't think there would be such a difference but I now have many things to thank my Korean roommate for.
One of the biggest differences for me personally is the complexity of dealing with trash in Korea. For one thing, there are no trash cans around the city! People just carry their trash all the way home. And some stores/restaurants even have signs saying not to throw away trash that you brought in from outside. Though somewhat annoying since my bag ends up holding all my trash, at first I thought it was a positive thing because maybe people would feel more responsible with throwing away their trash instead of littering. I commented on the lack of trash cans when speaking with a Korean friend from Seoul National University, and he seemed surprised, as though he never really thought about it. But in his case, he remarked that maybe if there were trash cans in public, there would be even less trash on the streets which I thought was interesting since his view of it was so opposite from mine.
But wait! I can't just come home and put my trash from my bag into the bin. I don't live in the school dorms so I'm not sure how it works over there, but people here are really good at recycling. Maybe I've just been slacking off in my recycling habits back at home, but in the US I sort my trash into recyclables, such as plastic and cardboard, and then everything else is just regular trash. And the trash bags in the US are those huge white or black ones that fit over the huge rectangular plastic bins that you and your roommates watch fill up, hoping someone takes it out eventually.
But here, the bags are tiny. They're probably around 1 gallon or so, and there are several different kinds that you apparently need to buy from somewhere (I'm not sure where, as my roommate took care of it). There's a clear one for "regular trash", a yellow one for "food waste", and then we use any sort of plastic bag for recyclables. As for food waste, Korea doesn't have the food disposal grinder in the sinks, so you need to collect the food waste separately. And as my roommate explained, there is some sort of tax or something on trash in Korea, so you should only take out the trash once the bag is really really full. I think because Korea has such a vigorous take on minimizing waste and a rather efficient way of enforcing it, people really take the time and effort to sort their trash correctly. There is no massive trash chute to throw the oversized Hefty brand plastic bag down, or the comfort of grinding away food waste in the food disposal.
This kind of vigilance regarding waste is something I feel is needed widely across the world. It's been years since we've heard of all the problems that trash causes in the environment such as animals in the ocean getting caught up in plastic or eating trash thinking it's food. Out of the many things I'll be taking away from my experience here, the effort to minimize and dispose of waste in such a way is definitely one of them.