Korean Garbage

Korea has an interesting way of dealing with garbage. They like to seperate food waste from recycle-able items and from general garbage. To do this, they have special trash cans devoted to food waste. The trashcan witht the orange lid below is one of these. On hot days, the odor from these can be bad if the can is not sealed well.

Another tool used by Korea are the green mesh bags in the photo below. These are for recycle-able items. These and the food wast trashcans and mesh bags are typically located outside of apartment buildings. The bags pictured below are next to the park near my home.

The park near my home is really great. There are a lot of benches and shade for people to relax in. A lot of people use the park. In Korea, it's quite ordinary to find a lot of smokers and a lot of people drinking beer and liquer at all times of the day. In the US, you would be frowned on for smoking near kids playing and given a fine for drinking in public.

The lack of real trashcans in the park and generally all around Seoul means there is a lot of trash to be cleaned up every morning. The trash you see in these photos is from one day and night of people using the park.

At least if it is going to be acceptable for people to make a mess of the park, you've got to give credit to the Koreans for hiring street cleaners to make things look nice again. I typically see 2-3 street cleaners in a day such as the man in the photo below. This park is usually spotless when the cleaners are done with it in the early morning hours.

The man sleeping on the large bench is a regular sight at parks. Even though it is around 10am in this photo, the man could very well be drunk or sleeping off a hangover.