Waste

This picture has nothing to do with what I am blogging about here but I thought it was an interesting shot taken of some Daejeon buildings at night ... very nice indeed.

There is something rather interesting I've noticed during my time over here in Korea about the matter of waste and the disposal thereof.  Now ... Korea in general is a rather small peninsula there is only so much room on this bit of land for everything under the sun that we humans require to live and function in a somewhat proper manner.  And one of those issues is that of what we do with our waste.  When you touch down in the ROK (that's Republic of Korea, duh) you quickly become aware that they seem to recycle and reuse everything.  If you eat at a restaurant or some kind of quick meal establishment, you will see how there are at least 3 or 4 bins to place various objects in.  Once you figure out what is required of each bin you see that everything has it's place.  The paper goes here, the plastic lids there, the food waste over there, the paper cups go in there, and the liquid waste you dump into this little container.  I truly am impressed by this and was personally glad to see they do this in a way of saying that everyone can take a moment to separate your trash for means to recycle.  After all we only have so much land on this little bit of Earth.  

Then the baffling part begins ... often you'll see litter everywhere, in the streets, in your face, everywhere.  At night it has become common to see young men "passing" out flyers for local bars or clubs in the area.  But I'm liberal with the term "passing" here.  In truth they are taking a handful of flyers and dumping them on the streets and on cars parked near-by.  Picture a young guy just aimlessly walking and dumping flyers on the streets as he's walking along.  It's quite a sight to behold really.  I was quite shocked the first time I saw this but have since learned this is rather common.  The contrast is really striking and leaves one with the (?) hanging over your head.  

I have no clear and pointed thing to say at this point.  Simply my pondering of the strange ways that people live ... in one hand there is a great system in place for recycling and reusing and on the other hand just outside in the street there are young people just carelessly "passing" out flyers to anyone who would love to pick up some trash on the street and read about a random place of business.  Strange huh?