[WHY] Why are there so few trash cans in Seoul?

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Published: 25 Nov. 2023, 07:00 Updated: 05 Dec. 2023, 15:37

[WHY] Why are there so few trash cans in Seoul?

Public trash bins near a bus stop in front of the Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Jung District, central Seoul [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Where are all the public trash cans in Seoul?

It’s a question that many locals and foreigners alike have been wondering for years.

“I remember, once I walked all across Gwanghwamun Square, from the subway station and past the Admiral Yi Sun-sin and Sejong the Great statues all the way to the far end of the plaza,” Park Tae-hee, a 26-year-old Seoul resident who lives in Seocho District, southern Seoul, said.

“I couldn’t find a single public trash bin, so I had to just carry my trash the entire time. If there were any, it just proves how few there are — it’s practically impossible to find one even though that area is always filled with people.”

Other areas, like the Dongdaemun neighborhood in Jung District, central Seoul, which is also a popular tourist destination thanks to its traditional markets, shopping centers and the famed spaceship-like landmark Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), were conspicuously lacking in street garbage cans as well.

As of early November, there was only one trash can at the side of the road, near a bus stop, stretching from Dongdaemun Station, subway line No. 1, crossing the Cheonggyecheon stream, and all the way to the DDP, which is about 550 meters (0.3 miles).

Public trash bins in Seoul on Oct. 12 [NEWS1]

But then does that mean that everyone just carries their trash around like Park? Littering has always been an issue in the capital city, with reports like the baskets of Seoul’s Ttareungyi, public rental bikes, being filled with empty soda cans, masks, flyers and tissues.

A large portion of Seoul residents, over 73 percent, feel that the city lacks trash cans, according to a 2021 survey on 3,112 people held by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. Only 1.5 percent said that the city already had plenty.

A separate survey on tourists also conducted by the city government found that some thought the streets of Seoul are dirty because there are not enough trash bins.

Public trash cans in Seoul over the years [YUN YOUNG]

What happened to Seoul's public trash cans?

In just three years, 30 percent of Seoul's existing trash cans — a whopping 2,000 — were removed from the streets.

There were 6,940 garbage bins in 2019, but the number was gradually reduced to 4,956 in 2022.

And as of September 2023, another 121 had been given the boot, leaving just 4,835 scattered across the city. The data was announced by Democratic Party lawmaker Choi In-ho in October, who had acquired data from the Seoul Metropolitan Government on the number of public trash cans over the past four years.

Public trash cans include those on the side of the road or near bus stops. The roadside number plummeted the most from 4,375 in 2019 to 1,860 in 2022. The city government had briefly installed 1,200 more trash cans near bus stops in 2020, reaching almost 3,000 bins, but the number fell again to 2,689 in 2022.

It’s harder still to find trash bins at the entrance of subway exits, as there were 853 in 2019 but even that was cut in half to 407 in 2022.

That’s why in crowded areas like Hongdae, Itaewon or Myeong-dong, it’s easier to see plastic garbage bags filled to the brim, tied up and placed in heaps on the side of the road or between alleyways, than it is to find an actual trash can.

Trash piled alongside the road in Sangam-dong in Mapo District, western Seoul [SHIN MIN-HEE]

A pay-as-you-throw plastic waste bag on the side of the road in Sangam-dong in Mapo District, western Seoul [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Why so few trash cans?

It all started when the government first implemented its nationwide pay-as-you-throw system on Jan. 1, 1995, to encourage people to start recycling and reduce trash.

It was around that time that Seoul started removing its trash cans from the street, which totaled 7,607.

The pay-as-you-throw system requires citizens to purchase plastic waste bags for non-recyclable trash that are specific to each district. They come in different sizes, such as 10 liters (2 gallons), 20 liters and up to 100 liters, and are each priced differently: For example, a single 20 liter bag costs around 500 won (40 cents). They can also be divided according to combustibles and non-combustibles.

Before that, littering and pollution was a severe social issue, and people didn’t recycle at all.

Initially, the new system wasn’t welcomed by the public. There were reports that people were dumping large quantities of garbage en masse just a few days before the pay-as-you-throw system was to go into effect, because they wanted to “save money” by not buying the bags. Civil servants were on guard at apartment waste disposal yards to make sure people weren’t “cheating,” according to a KBS report from 1994.

Since people were so reluctant to spend money on the trash bags, they would continue to discard their household trash in public trash bins on the streets and inside subway stations. That’s why the city and district offices slowly took action to remove them one by one.

Public trash cans in each of Seoul's 25 districts as of 2022 [YUN YOUNG]

What changes will be made?

Just last October, the Seoul government said that it took the complaints by foreigners and tourists from the 2021 survey into consideration and it announced a plan to increase the number of trash cans again through the year 2025.

By the end of this year, the goal is to put 665 more bins on the streets to reach 5,500.

A thousand more will be placed each year — 6,500 by December 2024 and 7,500 by December 2025.

“We’re focusing on increasing the number in areas with a large floating population and especially those popular among tourists, like Hongdae, Insa-dong, Itaewon and Myeong-dong,” a city government official in the environment management sector who requested anonymity told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

“The Seoul Metropolitan Government and district offices generally split the budget for trash bins half-and-half,” the official said. “We are also currently developing a new design for the trash bins and we are planning to distribute them across the city soon.”

Although nothing is settled on the new design, there will likely be changes in the color, and the size of the bin’s slot may be enlarged as it’s sometimes too small to hold larger waste items.

Public trash cans in each city as of 2023 [YUN YOUNG]

What about other cities and provinces?

Other areas in Korea are also lacking in the trash bin department, but many still feel that having no trash cans is better.

Officials from major cities like Incheon, Suwon and Busan all told the Korea JoongAng Daily that it was due to management issues.

Incheon officially has zero trash cans on the city’s streets currently, due to problems with “maintenance,” a city official said. Incheon has a surface area 1.7 times larger than Seoul.

“The city government takes no part whatsoever in managing public trash cans,” the official said. “Even if they do exist, they are all overseen according to each district office.”

Trash piled up in an alleyway in Seo District, Incheon [SHIN MIN-HEE]

A makeshift trash bin in an alleyway in Seo District, Incheon [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Suwon in Gyeonggi, which is one-fifth the size of Seoul, has only 40 trash cans in the entire city, and there are no plans to increase that number anytime soon.

“If we install trash cans throughout the city, it may be convenient for the pedestrians, but at the same time we get complaints from citizens,” a Suwon official under the city hall’s waste management sector said. “Excess trash starts piling up around each trash bin and they tend to overflow. The nearby store owners and citizens would soon ask us to get rid of them.”

Suwon did attempt to increase its public trash bins in 2014, but due to the complaints the city opted to get rid of them instead. There were no particular requests to install more since then.

Busan, which is 1.2 times larger than Seoul, has 455 street trash bins as of September 2023. It has been decreasing them from 604 in 2021 and 504 in 2022.

The southeastern port city has been having the same issues related to management and civil complaints.

“We do sometimes get requests for more trash bins, but there are far more asking to remove them,” a Busan city official said. “So we focus more on assigning street cleaners and having them sweep periodically.

“We don’t have any immediate plans to place more trash bins on the streets, but we are open to the idea if it ever gets brought up.”

Plastic beverage cups piled up in a public trash bin at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, on May 20, 2019 [YONHAP]

What about other cities in the world?

Tokyo is also notorious for not having enough trash bins out in public. But different from Seoul’s reasoning, in Japan, it started as counter-terrorism measure.

On March 20, 1995, the Tokyo subway fell victim to the release of a poisonous gas called sarin by a cult during rush hour, which killed 13 and injured more than 6,000 people. It was an unprecedented attack, and soon after, trash bins were removed in fear that they could hold dangerous substances.

After a long absence, they slowly started returning to parks and train stations in 2019. Bloomberg reported that the tourism boom in cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka had been influential in catering to foreigners unfamiliar with Japan’s waste disposal system.

Similar cases happened in London, Paris and New York City following bombings in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

As for Seoul, although there have never been instances of actual bombs found inside trash cans, there have been past reports of subway stations taking precautions against potential terrorism by removing trash cans entirely — which backfired with an upsurge of littering.

In 2004, KBS reported that 115 stations along lines 1 to 5, including City Hall Station on line No. 2, had gotten rid of their trash cans and that people were instead discarding their small waste on top of vending machines, between walls or even behind fire extinguishers.

“Korea hasn’t had any cases of terrorism involving trash cans in subway stations,” the Seoul Metropolitan Government official said. “There have been some instances where subway stations would change trash bins to have transparent receptacles and plastic bags, but other than that the street trash cans were never removed due to concerns regarding terrorism.”

A public trash bin in Dong District, Gwangju, in the shape of a colorful polar bear and iceberg are installed by the district office as an attempt to reduce littering around the area while simultaneously acting as an art piece. [GWANGJU DONG DISTRICT OFFICE]

To bring back, or not to bring back?

So will more trash cans be the answer to the litter problem? Sort of. It may not solve littering entirely, but where can people discard of their waste if there are no trash cans?

“It’s a question of whether you’re going to just let all the trash disperse across different areas, or at least gather them all in one place: the trash bins,” Hong Su-yeol, the head of the Resource Circulation Society Economy Institute, told the Korea JoongAng Daily. Hong is an expert on waste management.

“Of course we need more public trash bins. Expecting people to stop littering when there are not enough trash bins on the streets simply doesn’t make sense,” he said. “And surveilling littering through security cameras doesn’t do much justice either.”

A public trash bin near Yongsan Station in central Seoul [SHIN MIN-HEE]

Turning the trash cans into pieces of public art could be a creative solution, according to Park Seung-gyu, a biohealth science professor at Daejeon University.

He gave an example through the broken windows theory, which is a criminology term that states signs of disorder in an environment may lead to serious crimes in the future. At the same time, in an orderly and clean environment, criminal behavior is less likely to occur.

“The same can be applied to landscapes: If a trash can on the street is dirty, then its surrounding environment may become polluted as well,” Prof. Park told the Korea JoongAng Daily.

A cafe street in Dong District, Gwangju, was previously praised for installing a trash can in the shape of a colorful polar bear and iceberg in an attempt to reduce littering around the area while simultaneously posing as an art piece.

“Psychologically speaking, if a trash bin has a unique appearance, people may be more cautious in how and where they dispose of their waste,” Park said.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]

korea joongAng daily

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[WHY] Why are there so few trash cans in Seoul?

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