{"id":107019,"date":"2020-11-07T00:32:53","date_gmt":"2020-11-06T21:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/south-korean-sparrows-try-to-cap-surge-of-throwaway-plastic\/"},"modified":"2020-11-07T00:32:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-06T21:32:53","slug":"south-korean-sparrows-try-to-cap-surge-of-throwaway-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/south-korean-sparrows-try-to-cap-surge-of-throwaway-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"#South Korean ‘sparrows’ try to cap surge of throwaway plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#South Korean ‘sparrows’ try to cap surge of throwaway plastic<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n SEOUL \u2013 At a workshop in the South Korean capital, two environmental activists melt down old plastic bottle caps that thousands of volunteers known as \u201csparrows\u201d have collected in a bid to fight a tide of plastic the novel coronavirus has helped unleash.<\/p>\n

Green activists Kim Yona and Lee Dong-I use the bottle caps to make a tube-squeezing device \u2013 something they hope consumers will find useful and be able to keep, rather than toss out after just one use.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlastic is a recyclable resource,\u201d said Kim, 26. \u201cBut it\u2019s way too cheap, easy to make and easily thrown away, which makes people think it\u2019s disposable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The environmentalists opened their \u201cPlastic Mill\u201d in downtown Seoul in July, attracting 2,000 volunteer \u201csparrows\u201d \u2013 the name comes from a Korean expression about the bird that can\u2019t resist stopping at a mill to peck \u2013 who gathered an estimated 85,330 bottle caps in a collection drive.<\/p>\n

Unlike bottles, the caps are usually discarded at recycling facilities as they need extra work to sort, the activists said.<\/p>\n

The \u201csparrows\u201d get one upcycled tube-squeezer as a reward, no matter how many caps they bring in.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t reward them for sending lots of plastic, our goal is to reduce it,\u201d said Lee.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus has led to a surge of takeaway food and drink in South Korea, as elsewhere, fuelling a 14.6% increase in plastic production \u2013 to 6,800 tonnes in the first eight months of the year, according to environment ministry data.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never seen so much single-use plastic,\u201d said Lee Yong-gi, a 40-year veteran of the recycling business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t recycle it, it goes to landfill.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But low oil prices are undermining the profitability of recycling, and not all waste that gets to facilities is actually recycled.<\/p>\n

The recycling rate for collected waste fell to 40.6% in 2019 compared with 57.9 percent in 2015, according to lawmaker Lee Soo-jin, citing government data.<\/p>\n

The activists know their project won\u2019t end the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlastic Mill can\u2019t be the solution,\u201d said Lee. \u201cThe problem is not plastic, it\u2019s because we use it just once. We have to reduce plastic and reuse it. Upcycling is the last resort.\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#South Korean ‘sparrows’ try to cap surge of throwaway plastic” SEOUL \u2013 At a workshop in the South Korean capital, two environmental activists melt down old plastic bottle caps that thousands of volunteers known as \u201csparrows\u201d have collected in a bid to fight a tide of plastic the novel coronavirus has helped unleash. Green activists…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/korea-4-1.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[78822,43485,71387,73766,72420],"class_list":["post-107019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-11-6-20","tag-climate-change","tag-plastic","tag-recycling","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}