A change in the lifestyle and consu

A change in the lifestyle and consumption patterns of the population due to rapid
industrialization and urbanization has brought about a rapid increase in the flow of goods and services in
Korea. The rate of waste generation has accelerated as people pursue more convenient and luxurious
lifestyles that result in higher consumption and shorter lifespan of materials. In view of the relatively
small land mass, the generation of wastes has added to the environmental challenges that Korea has to
face [3]. Since the early 1990s, securing landfills for the country’s waste output has become more and
more difficult. Most of the existing landfills were nearly full, while some were discovered to be poorly
designed and/or operated and in need of serious remediation [4]. Furthermore, it was problematic to
find new sites for landfills, because of the congestion of land space and public concern for a cleaner
environment in their municipality. The Korean government’s Ministry of Environment (MOE), together
with a group of non-governmental environmental organizations, the automobile and recycling industries,
and local governments, started to concentrate on reducing waste generation at the source and
maximizing waste recycling [5], by implementing several waste management policies, as described in the
next section.