Green compost bins, blue recycling bins, and black landfill bins line a San Francisco sidewalk in front of a row of Victorian-style homes.

Waste management has always been a part of many societies since waste is not a problem we can overlook. Throughout history we have seen how improper waste management has led to many health crises such as in New York when it was first becoming a major city. Around 1895, New York had a sanitation department present, but the system was not properly utilized until around 1925 due to corruption, leading to the streets of New York being filled with trash. With waste being associated with many health issues, cities must have systems established to manage the waste that they generate. As we continue, I will discuss how different societies have implemented their own methods and tactics in order to ensure cleaner cities for the people. 

The World Health Organization European Region has agreed to follow strict laws that make sure they are following environmental and health criteria. The system that they use is what they call a “waste hierarchy” where they prioritize methods of reducing, recycling, and recovering over simply dumping everything in the landfills. With this setup, it makes the producers of the waste responsible for anything they choose to throw away. European Union Directives also set up recycling goals and strict laws to make sure companies are managing their waste properly, with a modern example being the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The laws that were implemented were luckily successful in lowering the overall waste going to landfills. Many countries within the EU are attempting various methods to reduce waste, with Ukraine implementing regulations on waste sorting and Georgia banning plastic bags, for example.

Culture also influences how certain societies make decisions on how to dispose of waste. On a more micro scale, we see how it would affect families, individuals, and local organizations. You may notice this more often depending on what city you are located in, but from what I have personally noticed in San Francisco, being more open to liberal ideas has definitely had more of an impact with managing trash being a bigger priority in the city compared to cities such as Los Angeles. I have seen how we have much more care about people’s ideologies and freedom here, and we have made waste management a big part of that care as well. San Francisco has a much more complex trash management system with a common example being the compost bins that you see basically on all the streets of SF. Speaking of LA, we can talk about how LA has done an incredibly poor job of managing its own waste. LA is not representative of all of the US, but it is still incredibly poorly managed. The city does not inform people properly on how to sort their trash, they refuse to pay for more public trash cans and garbage disposal workers, and in my experience, they also refuse to do simple street sweeps. A bit contrary to what I just mentioned (but oddly enough in preparation for the 2028 Olympics) LA has been slowly cleaning up the streets. But I still believe the reason why they are doing it is not the greatest of intentions. The streets should be cleaned up for the health and well-being of the people, not just for a one-time event. Typically, the streets that I have seen with my own eyes were deprived of proper governmental action: unmaintained trash cans, not enough trash cans, no place for dangerous objects such as needles, and inadequate public education on how to dispose of the trash properly. As a governmental body, it is the city’s responsibility to help support people with issues who cannot support themselves, and they have failed to do so. What are some methods to try to fix this mess? We could try to compare LA’s situation with other countries that have notoriously high numbers when it comes to unmanaged waste, so let us move on to a country’s successful waste management system. 

One unique method of better waste management that I have seen in action happens in Rwanda, where they practice a national cleanup day called Umuganda which occurs every last Saturday of the month. During this day people stop driving for a while, everybody is required to pick up trash, and if you are caught not picking trash up you could get fined. The Rwandan Genocide occurred over 100 days, with over 800,000 Rwandans killed. Luckily, the country has been changing for the better since implementing strict government power, and ensuring the health and safety of Rwandans is a priority now. An example that the government implemented was the banning of plastic bags nearly a decade ago and, as previously mentioned, Umuganda. Umuganda originally meant “forced labor.” Now they use the term to talk about cleaning up your community, which has been a great redefinition of this word. Rwanda has done a wonderful job at making a vast change with this method, but it is controversial because it is not a voluntary task.

South Korea’s trash management system is recognized worldwide as being one of the most advanced and is called Jongnyangje. Jongnyangje is an incredibly efficient waste management system when separating reusable waste and resources. Waste is separated into four categories: general waste, food waste, recyclable items, and bulky items. Bulky items are things that do not generally fit into a traditional trash bin, so instead South Koreans are provided with special stickers by the government, and bulky items get picked up. Recycling is also separated into four other categories: glass bottles, cans, plastic bottles, and waste paper. Food waste is not dumped in the landfill option but is separated into bags and bins. Each of the food waste amounts for each household is charged monthly to the household. This collected waste tends to be reused for animal consumption by drying them out and repurposing them as feed. Another option the Korean government uses is turning waste into fertilizer or compost after it has been processed enough for proper farming usage. What I found incredible was just how effective all of these methods truly are. According to the Washington Post, South Korea turns roughly 98% of its food waste into feed, compost, or energy. Just 20 years ago nearly 98% of its food was thrown away so the jump from that is an incredible growth. South Korea also has strict laws regarding environmentalism, both for people and corporations, to become a zero-waste society. The Waste Management Law was made to not only contain trash in landfills but also to reduce waste as well. South Korea has set up goals of becoming a zero-waste society and implementing a Waste-To-Energy Policy, with the goal of this policy to reduce waste disposal costs by using waste as a source of fuel. South Korea also aimed to achieve a 3% landfill rate and a recycling rate of 87% by 2020, but due to political and economic conflicts, they had to change the target year to 2025. 

 

Works Cited

Oatman-Stanford, hunter “A Filthy History: When New Yorkers Lived Knee-Deep in Trash”
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-new-yorkers-lived-knee-deep-in-trash/

Foellemer, Julia. “How do the cultural contexts of waste practices affect health and well-being?”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK582040/

Yee, Amy “How Rwanda Tidied Up Its Streets (And The Rest Of The Country, Too)”
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/07/18/628364015/how-rwanda-tidied-up-its-streets-and-the-rest-of-the-country-too

Waste Management Review, “South Korea Legislates Towards a Zero Waste Society”
https://wastemanagementreview.com.au/south-korea-legislates-towards-a-zero-waste-society/

(Henam, Sonia), (Sambyal, Swati Singh) “Ten zero-waste cities: How Seoul came to be among the best in recycling”
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/waste/ten-zero-waste-cities-how-seoul-came-to-be-among-the-best-in-recycling-68585

(Jeong, Andrew), (Yoon, Julie) “South Korea Recycles 98% of its food waste. What can it teach the world?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/08/09/south-korea-food-waste-composting/