South Korea claims to have one of the highest interception rates in the world for food waste collections, with around 95 per cent intercepted and composted and sent to AD. It is therefore no surprise that the use of compostable materials there is widespread, and not just for collections, which are mandated in compostable bags.
At the end of 2020, South Korea announced the sort of long-term policy objective we would be delighted to see in the UK – its intention that by 2050 all plastic packaging will be bioplastics. Now the policy has been confirmed and implementation is beginning.
After China, another Asian industrial giant is moving rapidly towards the use of fewer plastics and more bioplastics. Unlike China, South Korea has the composting capacity to treat the materials at the end of life.