We were deeply shocked by collecting countless plastic bottles on the beach!
On August 26, 2022, HUMAN IN LOVE(HIL) and KT&G’s Chungcheongnam-do regional office conducted a beach clean-up on the Jangpori beach in Seocheon and collected a total of 214.5kg of marine waste. KT&G adopted the Jangpori beach in 2022.
Because of heavy rain last week, garbage from inland areas flowed into the sea along the Geum River and accumulated on the coastline of Seocheon, Chungcheongnam-do province. We classified the collected marine debris and found that most of them were plastic bottles.
The worst thing we got to recognize was that all the plastic bottles coming to the beach were bottles with closed lids because they could float in the water by buoyancy. It means that the countless plastic bottles, which were thrown away without their lids, have been piling up in the sea.
A part of the total waste flows into the ocean, and only a small fraction of it comes to a shore. Isn’t it terrible that the scenes in the images just showed us a tiny amount of waste? It is necessary to make a policy to encourage the culture of using eco-friendly containers and to increase the recycling rate by paying refunds for plastic bottles, like glass bottles.
The Adopt-A-Beach program is organized by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries in the Republic of Korea(MOF) and the Korea Marine Environment Corporation(KOEM). As a regional coordinator of the program, HIL has been managing the adopted beaches and operating the program in Chungcheongnam-do province (Dangjin, Seosan, Taean, Boryeong, Hongseong, and Seocheon).
We hope many companies and organizations interested in marine environment conservation will participate in the program with HIL.
