What Happens to Our Food Waste?

In South Korea, it has been illegal since 2005 to put food waste in the regular trash.

We decided to follow our leftovers. Here’s what we saw →

On a weekday afternoon, we had lunch at a restaurant — a delicious chicken stew.

Then we peeked in the kitchen, where the chef, Lee Hae-yeon, put our leftovers in a designated bin, separated from the other trash.

It’s an extra step to Lee’s routine. But he was happy to comply: “I think this is the best way to deal with the food waste,” he told us.

We followed our leftovers to a local food waste facility, where workers sorted out the big debris, then machines ground the rest into animal feed for chickens and ducks.

The smell was strong inside, but the workers didn’t seem to mind. “My nose has been desensitized,” said Sim Yoon-sik, the facility’s manager.

At a nearby farm, the fertilizer was used to grow roses.

By returning the food waste to the soil, carbon is kept out of the atmosphere and from warming the Earth.

“We view food waste as a valuable resource, so we shouldn’t throw it away,” said Lee Dong-hwan, the mayor of Goyang, the city where the farm was.

Read more news from Asia: