Inside Seoul’s trash troubles following landfill ban

A claw picks up trash at a bunker located at the Mapo Resource Recovery plant in western Seoul on Feb. 4. [PARK SANG-MOON]

 
A massive steel claw descends into a dim bunker piled high with garbage, sinking into layers of discarded waste before tightly gripping a tangled heap of trash.
 
The claw then rises slowly, its metal jaws clenched around bulging garbage bags, hovering in the air near one of three towering incinerators. The furnace openings remain open and dark, their entrances rimmed with stray debris left from earlier operations.
 

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The entire scene unfolds behind a wide pane of reinforced glass, where an official stands at a control panel, carefully controlling a joystick to guide the claw’s movements, almost like an oversize arcade machine.
 
Most of the waste is sealed in pay-as-you-throw bags, their designs varying by district. 
 
On Wednesday morning, the cycle unfolded as it does nearly every day at the Mapo Resource Recovery Plant in western Seoul.
 
That routine now lies at the center of mounting concern over how Seoul manages its trash under new rules on the management of household waste, which came into effect this year.
 
In January, the central government banned the direct landfilling of household waste across the greater Seoul area, including Gyeonggi and Incheon, cutting off a longstanding outlet for garbage that was buried without pretreatment. 
 

Public incineration plants in Seoul [YUN YOUNG]

 
Seoul’s response and its limits



Since the landfill ban took effect, Seoul has moved to rely more heavily on incineration, framing expanded and modernized facilities as central to managing household waste in the years ahead.
 
The Mapo Resource Recovery Plant is one of four public incinerators operated by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, processing household waste from five districts in central and western Seoul. From midnight to 8 a.m., Monday through Saturday, garbage trucks cycle through the facility, unloading trash that the city increasingly plans to manage through a mix of reduction, recycling and incineration.
 
That shift underpins Seoul’s longstanding plan to expand capacity at Mapo. In 2022, the city proposed building a new incineration facility next to the existing plant, capable of processing up to 1,000 tons of waste a day, in anticipation of the ban on direct landfilling. The project, however, has been stalled for years amid fierce opposition from Mapo residents and district officials. The ban is set to expand nationwide in 2030.
 
The Mapo facility was designed to process up to 750 tons of household waste a day and currently handles about 600 tons. On Wednesday, it received 517 tons, according to a source at the plant.
 

Resident monitors randomly check waste at the bunkers of the Mapo Resource Recovery Plant in western Seoul, in an undated video shown at the facility. [PARK SANG-MOON]

 
Alongside expansion plans, the city has turned to demand reduction. Seoul recently launched a campaign it dubbed a waste “diet,” urging residents to cut back on household waste or trash collected in government-mandated pay-as-you-throw bags. City officials say Seoul residents dispose of an average of about 48 pay-as-you-throw bags a year, arguing that even modest reductions, if spread across the population, could meaningfully ease pressure on the system.
 
This year, officials estimate that an average of 2,016 tons of household waste a day, about 69.4 percent of the total, will be incinerated at publicly operated facilities. The remaining 889 tons, or 30.6 percent, is expected to be treated through private incineration or recycling. Last year, of roughly 2,905 tons of household waste generated daily, 558 tons were sent directly to landfills.
 
The city has outlined two main goals: cutting waste by about 206 tons a day through public campaigns and incentives, and increasing public incineration capacity to 2,700 tons a day by 2033 through new facilities and modernization.
 

Officials at the Mapo Resource Recovery Plant work at the facility’s central control panel on Feb. 4. [PARK SANG-MOON]

 
Both have run into resistance. The proposed new incinerator in Mapo is tied up in court after the district office won a lower-court ruling overturning the city’s site designation. Seoul has appealed, and an appellate ruling is expected Thursday. 
 
Modernization plans elsewhere have also drawn pushback. Last Thursday, Gangnam District objected to a city proposal to expand its incinerator by 250 tons a day, arguing that projects without resident consent unfairly concentrate environmental burdens.
 
“Upgrading incinerators directly affects residents’ health and property rights,” said Cho Sung-myung, the head of Gangnam District Office. “These decisions must reflect public opinion.”
 
With new capacity stalled, Seoul last month issued a public apology, acknowledging it had not been fully prepared for the landfill ban. After the policy took effect on Jan. 1, waste from several districts was diverted to landfills outside the capital region, including sites in the Chungcheong region, prompting protests from local residents. City officials say such transfers, however, account for less than one percent of total waste.
 
Why the ban?


Burning waste before landfilling reduces its volume by roughly 85 percent, easing pressure on scarce landfill space. That logic underpinned a 2021 revision to enforcement rules under the Wastes Control Act, which laid the legal groundwork for banning direct landfilling. Direct landfilling refers to the disposal of waste without pretreatment such as sorting or incineration.
 
The policy also reflects a broader environmental rationale. Burying untreated garbage generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and ties up land for decades. By recovering recyclable materials first, incinerating what remains and burying only the ash, officials argue, resources can be reused while limiting environmental damage.
 

Waste is burned in a rotary kiln at the Mapo Resource Recovery plant in western Seoul on Feb. 4. [PARK SANG-MOON]

 
Seoul’s incineration plants operate on that model. Heat generated during incineration is converted into energy and reused within the facilities, creating a closed-loop system.
 
According to a source at the Mapo plant, around 50 to 69 percent of the heat generated is reused within the facility. 
 
In the Seoul metropolitan area, large-scale landfilling began in 1978 at the Nanji landfill in Mapo District, which for years accepted waste from Seoul and nearby cities, including Incheon and Bucheon in Gyeonggi. When Nanji reached capacity in 1992, authorities opened a vast landfill spanning more than 1,600 hectares in western Incheon and Gimpo. For nearly three decades, that site absorbed most of the capital region’s trash.
 

Garbage trucks unload waste at the bunkers of the Mapo Resource Recovery Plant in western Seoul, in an undated video shown at the facility. [PARK SANG-MOON]

What comes next?
 
During the night at the resource recovery plant, garbage trucks from five districts line up. Each vehicle is weighed upon entry and again after unloading its contents into a bunker, allowing officials to calculate precisely how much waste each district delivers.
 
Oversight begins immediately. Resident monitors conduct random inspections, tearing open selected garbage bags to check whether their contents are eligible for incineration.
 
“We generally accept waste brought for the day,” the Mapo plant official said. “But if a truck repeatedly delivers ineligible garbage, we can ban it from entering for several days or up to a week.”
 
Once cleared, the waste enters the incineration process. It is burned in a rotary kiln and passed through multiple filtration stages to remove hazardous substances such as dioxins and heavy metals before emissions are released through the chimney. According to plant officials, dioxin levels are kept below 0.01 nanograms TEQ per cubic meter, which is far stricter than the legal limit of 0.1.
 
Some experts, however, question whether the current approach can deliver the reductions officials are aiming for.
 
Park Seok-soon, an emeritus professor of environmental science and engineering at Ewha Womans University, says Seoul’s waste-reduction goals are unlikely to be met under the current system. He argues that Korea should expand its extended producer responsibility system — now applied to appliances and automobiles — to fast-growing sources of waste such as parcel delivery.
 
“Delivery companies shouldn’t just drop packages and leave,” he said. “They should also be required to take responsibility for the waste.”
 
Data suggest recyclable materials are still widely discarded. 
 
A government survey conducted between April 2021 and November 2022 found that plastic and vinyl accounted for 25.3 percent of the contents of Seoul’s pay-as-you-throw garbage bags. The system has been in place since 1995.
 

Filtered smoke exits through the chimney of Mapo Resource Recovery plant in western Seoul on Feb. 4. [PARK SANG-MOON]

 
The pressure is set to intensify. Seoul’s public incinerators undergo routine maintenance shutdowns each spring and fall, during which city officials say they may have no choice but to invoke exceptional provisions allowing limited direct landfilling, subject to approval by the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment. Any excess waste would need to be handled by private operators outside the city.
 
“The core problem is that there is simply nowhere left to bury waste,” Park said. “Even after incineration, the ash still has to be landfilled. Incineration only reduces the volume.” 
 
The ministry has said it will permit temporary exemptions to prevent a waste crisis, allowing direct landfilling in unavoidable circumstances — such as in disasters or malfunctioning of incinerators — after consultations with metropolitan mayors and provincial governors. 

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [cho.jungwoo1@joongang.co.kr]