Mitigating Hazards by Better Designing a Recycling Program: Lessons Learned from South Korea

Abstract

As an effort of mitigating hazards, pro-environmental programs have been vigorously activated with regard to solid waste recycling. It is beneficial for both the environment and resource saving, but implementation and enforcement are hard to achieve voluntarily. The South Korean Government first implemented the Deposit Refund System (DRS) and later the Extended Producer Responsibility Program (EPR) to reduce waste and encourage recycling in South Korea. Under the DRS, producers would pay for recycling the wastes of the products. The government then repealed the DRS and implemented the EPR program. Under this program, the producers recycle as much as the Ministry of Environment determines or pay a penalty for an excessive amount of the waste. In the broader perspective of disaster management, such policy programs can mitigate environmental hazards. This paper compares those two programs that facilitated the level of recycling, focusing on how such programs regulate producers and how they were operated from the perspective of implementation and enforcement.

Keywords

• hazard mitigation
• pro-environmental program
• solid waste recycling