A few things North America could learn from Korea

A country with 10 million people in it's capital alone certaintly has its challenges, or does it?  Certaintly, with such a large population, some adaptations have needed to take place for order to remain in such a society.  Let me be the first one to give my appreciation and a cyber handshake to the South Koreans.   It's a good thing North America exceeds it's land mass by its people because we are spoiled.  

1.  MANDATORY RECYCLING. 

Ummm, hello?  Why can't we implement this into North American society.  It's BRILLIANT!  Frankly, I can't believe it never even crossed my mind before.  Garbage is such a responsibilty in Korea.   All trash must be neatly separated into one of three piles.  All food garbage is separted from regular garbage.  You must purchase pink garbage bags which are used only for disposing of regular trash consisting of our usual plastics, wrappers, ect.  Then, the food is kept separate.  A neat little trick I learned in my first three days here...keep a bag in the freezer with all of your food garbage so as to keep the fruit flies and smell away.  As in Canada, ALL bottles must be recycled, which granted most of us do anyway, but there is still an element of laziness in all of us, in which we throw the odd bottle or two out.  There is no laziness here.  If you are caught not properly disposing your garbage, it's a $1000 fine!  Yup!  That's a good way to enforce recycling. 

2.  PAPER CUPS

Drinking water of out mini slices of paper is an art that I am still perfecting.  Perhaps it's just the city I live in, but most businesses have a filtered water station with cute little triangular paper cups, yup, you guessed it, made out of recycled material and are recycleable.  Many shop owners are also very accomodating in filling up your water bottle for you.

3.  Take out is not really take out

This may sound a bit odd, but actually makes a lot of sense and also saves the country being littered with take out "waste".  You know, those styrofoam containers and plastic forks.  So, when you order take out here, it actually comes to you on one of the restaurant plates.  When you are done with your meal, you simply place it outside your door and someone comes along and picks it up.  I especially like the "no dishes for me to do" idea behind this. 

Well, there you have it.  Korea is an environmentally friendly country and we could certaintly take some notes.