Busan is good

Beginning from October, remember to take a reusable grocery bag to the mart with you

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To reduce the consumption of disposable products, the Ministry of Environment and five large stores - Lotte Mart, Mega Mart, E-Mart, Homeplus and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation’s Hanaro Mart – agreed on August 25 not to sell disposable plastic bags from October.

350 branches of those five stores will cease selling disposable plastic bags from the start of next month, so consumers must come prepared with their own bags.

Each of the stores will also cease offering discounts to customers who bring their own bags and will also no longer refund customers who refund the purchased plastic bags. To minimize any inconvenience to store customers, the store will offer reusable bags of varied quality and size or empty cardboard boxes to customers.

To help Busan residents to adjust as quickly as possible to the new system, Busan City plans to make and supply reusable standard biodegradable plastic garbage bags in various sizes and quality.

Reusable garbage bags will be sold at the locations and can be used as large shopping bags or as garbage bags, and will come in ten, twenty, and thirty liter sizes.

The reusable garbage bags will be thicker and of high durability with handles, making them easy to carry, but they will be no more expensive than the standard garbage bags.

Last year, each citizen used an average 320 disposable plastic bags, or a total of some 16 billion bags across the nation. This policy is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by over 6,390 tons as well as the social cost of 7.5 billion won.

Over the last 20 years, most of the 16 billion bags have been either incinerated or placed in a landfill.

Busan City is promoting and encouraging citizens to use reusable bags as part of the nation’s ‘Low Carbon, Green Growth’ project, and the city’s desire to help save the world’s precious natural resources.