MSW collection in Multi-Family Residential Buildings in Korea
According to the 2010’ Population and Housing Census , 57.2% of the Korean population lives in
multi-family residential buildings, including apartment buildings [18]. Figure 11 shows the spatial
distribution of the people who inhabit apartment buildings throughout the country.
MSW is collected communally whereby apartment residents bring their garbage to such
collection points as the stationary waste containers and bins that are located in front of, or close to,
their buildings. An example of such community containers is shown in Figure 12a. In this system,
everyone is responsible for following the rules and buying and using VBWF bags for non-recyclable
wastes, and discarding the wastes appropriately. The tenants or owners of each unit must purchase
their own VBWF bags, which vary in size and price as illustrated in Table 6. Municipalities must work
with apartment management to prevent or minimize violations to the VBWF bag rules. Food wastes are
exempt and are collected separately and put into communal food waste containers (see Figure 12d).
Recyclables are sorted and placed into different recycling bins, which appear on different days of the
week.