Seven ways of Doing Eco-friendly shopping in Metropolitan Seoul

1. E-mart re-fills and re-cycles 

Korea’s answer to Walmart, E-mart turns out recycled plastic container pack for its fruit products and water-resistant easy-peel label stickers. It also started using PLA, biodegradable material for packaging, as well as showcasing re-fill service for laundry detergent and shampoo. The company is expecting to reduce more than 1-ton recycled containers per year.     

 

2. Duty free, guilt free 

Since 2020, stationed inside Jeju International Airport, the JDC duty free shop supplies eco-friendly biodegradable shopping bag to its customers, where 2 million pieces of vinyl shopping bags were consumed per year. The shop says it is first ever to change to eco-friendly material at duty free shops in South Korea.

 

3. Designer shopping bag with a secret

After a sustainable shopping bag for life in Korea? Design Studio Lim Sungmook has designed bags that will last more than ten years. Users can fold and modify its MODOBAG to their taste. It also offers washable Vinary Hanji Dust Mask, face covering made of hanji, Korean traditional paper.

 

4. A credit card can help   

The newly-launched KB Kookmin Green Wave 1.5℃ Card is a specialized product that not only donates for its usage but piles up points for Green Mobility – that is, such gimmicks as electric cars and hydrogen cars – as well as points for Green Shopping covering ecological food brands and upcycled products.      

 

5. Kakao Kan Do it

On World Environment Day 2021, Kakao Commerce announced its actions for the environment. They decided to gradually swap the packing material for all its new launch, and they predict yearly CO2 reduction as high as 32ton. They explain that this downsizing is just the amount of CO2 absorption made by five thousand 30-year-old pine trees per year.          

 

6. Hansalim alive! 

Hansalim is a producer-consumer cooperative with its own homepage at eng.hansalim.or.kr. It aims to save South Korea’s sustainable farms as well as its independent consumers, who double as paid cooperative members.

 

7.  Local shopping

You can find here and there quite large Local Food direct outlets – joining under the name of Nonghyup, South Korea’s National Agricultural Cooperative Federation. The Local Food movement promotes short distance shipping and says no to multi-stage distribution processes.