Waste Plants Are Nationwide Boondoggle

Yuseong-gu, Daejeon built a 2.5 billion won fertilizer conversion center in January 2002 that was supposed to be able to convert 10 tons of food waste to fertilizer a day. It was also supposed to be odorless.

But bad smells have been a hallmark of the plant from day one. The plant’s machinery frequently doesn’t work. And the fertilizer produced has sometimes killed crops.

Yuseong-gu stopped supervising the plant in January 2005 and handed over the duty of processing its food trash to a private corporation.

Local governments across the country began building food waste recycling plants in 1997. They were encouraged to build these plants after the government banned burying food trash in a new waste control law and announced that went into effect in 2005.

Last December alone, 256 food waste recycling centers including public and private centers opened across the nation.

The government provided about 120 billion won in funding for the recycling centers, but some local governments didn’t hold up their end of the bargain, neglecting to review or prepare the groundwork for the facilities in advance.

Even though food waste is known to have high salt content, some local governments did not prepare for this, which resulted in metals corroding easily. And as the quality of the compost and fertilizer made in these plants deteriorated, farmers turned to other fertilizer sources.

As a result, 16 public facilities for recycling food waste have shut down since 2001. And the operating rate of the remaining facilities is 64.6 percent of design specifications. More plants are expected to close soon due to bad smells.

One Yuseong-gu resident said, “It really doesn’t make sense that a facility built by the city turned into useless scrap metal” and added, “Faulty construction investigations should be launched.”

Outcry-

Gwangmyeong City in Gyeonggi Province spent 5.9 billion to build a 1,400 pyeong waste recycling plant last August, but it has not worked as planned.

The plant emitted pollution that exceeded maximum safe exposure limits, and food and drink were not fully decomposed before discharge. Gwangmyeong City eventually handed its food waste disposal needs to the private sector also.

Gwangmyeong Peacenet, a local civic group, asked the Board of Audit and Inspection to conduct an inspection and is preparing a lawsuit.

The government has been criticized not for inspecting its food waste facilities. As a result, it has planned regular inspections starting this year and decided to shut down those facilities that couldn’t operate properly. In addition, the government will review the standards of the facilities thoroughly and provide funding for additional costs only if their demands for adequate fertilizer are met.

The facilities that have recycling capacities of more than five tons a day are allocated two environmental engineer supervisors (a waste treatment engineer and water treatment engineer).

“There are a lot of facilities which merely use drying techniques to lower the weight of food waste,” said civil engineering professor Bae Jae-ho at Inha University. “Environmentally friendly technologies should be developed in order to make them into higher value-added businesses,”

Kum-Chun Hwang Ki-JinLee kchwang@donga.com doyoce@donga.com