garbage

Trash disposal in Korea is a pain in the arse, and something I was never entirely schooled in.

For the entirety of my life, throwing something away has consisted of buying a few hefty bags at the store, piling all that I can into it, putting it into a bin and forgetting about it. Here, there are no such hefty bags. Here, your trash bags are the bags that you carry your groceries home in. So when I buy groceries, I get one small trash bag with them, a bag for which I pay 30 cents.

Now, when I'm in the checkout line, I have options. I can ask for a white bag, which I believe is reserved for recyclables, or a green bag, which is for all other trash. It seems to be a pretty sneaky way of forcing people to be environmentally friendly. But, I don't mind too much.

One thing I do mind is the way I have to get rid of food scraps. Food scraps cannot be put into either the white or the green bags. Food scraps have to be disposed of by walking them to the nearest food disposal bin, which are at the end of most streets. Now think about that: every time I, say, eat an apple, I don't have the freedom to just toss the core into a bag. No, I have to walk down the street and put it into the most foul smelling container you can imagine. Of course, I don't do this every time I eat an apple, rather I put it into a bag or bowl that I use to compile all of my food scraps- a bag or bowl that I don't empty nearly often enough and inevitably attracts a myriad of bugs which are a whole other nuisance.

So that's how it is for me. I suspect that if you just read this whole thing, you now have a nagging feeling that I just wasted a minute of your time. If that's the case, the title I have chosen has a double meaning.