Korean Trash

As you may know, I am fascinated by trash.  What do people throw away?  What does that say about the values of a group or a culture?  What kind of good stuff ended up in the dumpster?  The boys and I made a huge haul when Dordt ended its semester in May, and we've been poking around this campus of 4000 to see what we could learn.  

Nathan Rider (a Dordt alum) asked me recently on Facebook whether Korea dumpsters are locked or whether I am free to explore.  Well, Nathan, they are not locked.  Because there are no dumpsters.  

Now, at first glance, you might contradict this.  Behind our building on campus, there are 5 bins into which you must sort your household trash: plastic, metal, glass, "waste," and cardboard.  Paper and food scraps apparently count as "waste."  None of the bins are labeled in English, so if you're the first one to sort your trash into just-emptied bins, it's wise to run away and wait until someone else sorts their trash first. I hear the ajeemas (the middle-aged maintenance women who seem to run the world here) are loud and vengeful.

Ok.  So, where do these bins get emptied?  I have no idea.  Truly.  Most of the dorms just have piles of white trash bags near them.  Once a week, the ajeemas gather the bags and load them onto... handcarts.  Like the ones we used for walk-in camp sites in Minnesota. I took this picture while hiding behind a car, fearing the ajeemas would see me:

I haven't figured out where the bags go after that.   There are piles of bags along the city streets (yes, those are small gardens in the empty lot pictured below) but no dumpsters.  We also find bags of trash along the trails in the woods, near the road at the beach, etc.  

So what will I do with my spare time?  Well, we still poke around the trash, but need to find a new name for our activity.  We found 3 nice blankets/comforters last week in a bag behind a dorm; Elisabeth found a nice wicker basket (now adapted as a bike basket) and a cute (non-working) watch in one of the two "Where Furniture Goes to Die" sites on campus - piles of broken chairs, shelves, and molded-over mystery wood.  We also found the campus Site of Dead Refrigerators but haven't had the nerve to open them up.

We were hopeful about solving the trash mystery this morning when we saw a flatbed truck with about 30 plastic bins on it - perhaps THIS was the magic dump truck!  Two men got out of the truck near a Dead Furniture Site; one got in the back and shook each bin then pushed the fuller ones off the truck to the other guy, who put them near the dead furniture, and then they left.  More mystery... 

So, if you know anyone interested in making some money in Korea, trash hauling might be just the thing...