[The Hwankyung Ilbo] Due to Covid-19, delivery, packaging services and delivery services have increased. Even if the reduction of waste is prioritized, it is inevitable to use it unnecessarily.

Although it is said to increase separation and recycling rate, small businesses that collect and select are still small. The actual recycling rate is less than 20%. In the end, the rest of the waste is being buried or illegally dumped to create a waste mountain.

Korea's household waste landfill rate is 18%. However, in advanced countries, it is only 0 to 4 percent. With the end of the landfills in the Seoul metropolitan area in 2025, the Ministry of Environment is preparing an alternative site for the landfills in the metropolitan area, but no local government has applied. Now there is no place to dump waste.

Landfills on the narrow Korean Peninsula are the least sustainable waste disposal methods. Methane still emits from illegally created garbage mountains. Methane has a global warming effect at least 21 times higher than carbon dioxide. 

In Europe, which is most active in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, measures to use waste using energy recovery facilities have been discussed since 2010, and reflected them in policies through the 2014 goal.

As a result of its policy-driven implementation before the Carbon Neutral Declaration, the EU's Green Deal in 2019 considers the net environment system through energy recovery as the EU's long-term major strategy to achieve 2050 carbon neutrality. 

Energy recovery facilities refer to cogeneration plants, also called 'resource recovery facilities' and 'burning plants'. It generates electricity from heat generated during incineration of waste and also uses it for district heating.

According to the Ministry of Environment, the incineration rate of waste incinerators nationwide is 109 percent, which is being processed beyond the facility capacity limit. Accordingly, it is said that it will invest 1 trillion won to push for a state-led waste disposal facility with waste incineration and landfill sites by region.

However, Korea needs to increase the acceptability of its residents. According to the Ministry of Environment's 2021 budget plan, out of the total budget of about 10 trillion won, the budget used to raise awareness of the environmental system is 1.02 billion won, which is 0.01 percent. Including 17.6 billion won used to strengthen environmental education, 0.19 percent of the total budget.

To address this problem, the Trash Transformers campaign will be launched at the Climate Change Center.

The campaign also won the Excellence Award at the Korea Institute of Environmental Industry and Technology's low-carbon, eco-friendly civic activity competition.

"U-Savers," a youth supporter of the Center for Climate Change and a volunteer against climate change, will lead the Trace Transformers campaign in the second half of this year and carry out activities to revitalize the environmental system industry.

In particular, it will raise awareness of the environmental system and promote the right knowledge through various activities such as citizen awareness surveys, SNS campaigns, and content production. 

Choi Yeo-myung, a student of the 14th Yusebus, said, "It is regrettable that the awareness of citizens does not change compared to the rapid progress of waste energy recovery technology. Through this campaign, we hope to raise awareness as much as technology development."

Choi Hee-soo showed enthusiasm, saying, "From the perspective of ordinary citizens, I want to promote the importance of waste energy resourceization to realize carbon neutrality and the environment-friendly system."

Lee Ju-hee, a researcher at the Center for Climate Change, said, "The achievement of the 50 carbon neutralization cannot be achieved without realizing the net environment system through waste resourcing." "MZ generation is also seriously looking at the issue of waste resourceization and environment system."