time now for our life and info segment where we focus on information that will
hopefully be useful for your everyday life today we're going to talk about a
trend in Korea that's aimed at making the country and the earth a more
sustainable place beginning with eco-friendly packaging I'm pleased to
say our Asami is joining me in the studio today so Sami Phil is in on this
latest wrapping trend and how it's affecting South Korea's online shopping
remark you know how we order everything online these days ranging from food to
furniture and of course I discovered this new trend of packaging diet it's in
vogue it is literally referring to cutting down on materials harmful for
the environment and people ranging from air and plastic buffers to of course the
masking tape that that wraps boxes and online shopping has been a new norm in
South Korea the amount of the domestic online shopping surpassing worth 94
billion u.s. dollars and the number of the boxes delivered Korea integrated
logistics Association says that in 2013 one point four billion boxes were
delivered annually rising to over two billion in 2016 and topping 2.5 billion
last year and the amount of boxes is likely to continue rising over the
coming years as well with this in mind mr. Huang Hampton who I met who worked
as a delivery man for over a decade came up with a remarkable idea of removing
masking tape which takes nearly a hundred years to decompose take a listen
working the parcel delivery service industry for 12 years I thought it'd be
so much more convenient for people if there were boxes without tables so I
structured that box in my head and pitched the idea and my brother designed
it with me the brothers flagship product just as the company name is the wing box
with small wings on the sides the wings come with ecological hot melt adhesives
harmless for people and the environment mr. Huang says with the masking tape
gone it reduces the stressful sound of packing making the
packaging environment much more friendly yeah that's quite impressive to see the
operations there at the factory sangmi and it's good that they're not
using masses of tape because that's no good for the environment I say takes a
long time to decompose as well and when you have a box covered in tape it's
almost impossible to open sometimes so that would be good but I also hear you
checked out another kind of box as well so tell us more about this new delivery
box right so I went to check out this warehouse of a delivery service company
called hello nature so this company developed and adopted a brand new
delivery box called the green box what's so special about it not only does it
look completely different from a conventional papermate box it's also
returnable the major feature of green box is its ability to be returned unlike
conventional boxes also you open the box with a zipper
instead of tape and it doesn't need plastic or air buffers to keep products
fresh the company says that it will gradually replace replace all these
conventional boxes into the new made ones well that's good to hear as well
while we keep speaking about keeping things fresh in boxes the problem is
with frozen food a lot of the time you need to have ice packs and whatnot but
how are these kind of foods being stored in these new boxes right so this company
hello nature actually came up its own with its own solution of keeping frozen
fruits and vegetables fresh and that using ice packs that we know of but it
is very very different from the the compositions that we know it is very
noble and interesting because the ice bags that come with the ice creams or
frozen fruits normally contained the super absorbent polymer it's a harmful
chemical substance but the new ice pack is solely made up of water and starch
with the packaging Oh made up of just paper so that means you
can just toss it in the garbage that's right when you're done yes okay
because in my freezer I'm sure you have the same problem I have pack after pack
of these ice bags sat in there and I know that they contain kind of dangerous
chemicals that I don't want to spread into the environment so I often don't
know what to to do with them so what should we do with all these plastic
older-style ice packs that we have in our freezers
that's a good point mark I know it's really a dilemma when you open your
fridge and then you see all these stacks of ice packs you don't know what to do
with them you are worried how to decompose it so it's a dilemma but
rarely we use them again but don't exactly know how to again dispose them
but help could be at hand the local King dongle office had a bright idea of
installing ice pack collection boxes so the residents can come and throw in
their ice packs whenever they like these ice packs are then collected every month
to be washed and reused take a listen we began the campaign this
March when we signed an agreement with Hyundai Home Shopping Network
Corporation in a civic environment group civic growth goes around and cleans all
18 install boxes a week and we continue to raise awareness of the campaign it
has an effect of reducing garbage and it's meaningful that we are reusing the
resources we have the road and kang dongju are striving to makes whole a
plastic free city the people who come by also feel happy engaging in our garbage
reducing movement the local government is thinking of bringing these collected
ice packs and bringing it to the local market to keep those fresh vegetables
and especially the fish to be cool and come dugu office is getting a lot of
calls about this campaign about this collection box so it seems like
expectations are raising that it will spread throughout Seoul and throughout
the nation and so meanwhile for those who are out
of reach from these boxes you can actually take these ice box and and put
them in the volume based garbage bag okay so at the moment they're only in
this kang dongju area but there is the hope that this is going to spread all
across seoul and eventually all across the country as well in the meantime we
can keep our plastic ice packs for picnics and everything that the summer
season is coming up stick them in your house box and you can keep your gimbap
and and sandwiches nice and cool thank you very much for your report sangmi we
appreciate it thank you