Yongkyu Kwon

His­tor­i­cal­ly, land fill­ing has been the most com­mon method of or­gan­ised waste dis­pos­al in many places around the world. In South Ko­rea, mu­nic­i­pal sol­id waste has gen­er­al­ly been dis­posed of at open land­fill sites. How­ev­er, dur­ing the past ten years, en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion is­sues have been a ma­jor con­cern and as a re­sult, mod­ern re­gion­al dis­pos­al fa­cil­i­ties have re­placed con­ven­tion­al, un­suit­ably lo­cat­ed and poor­ly op­er­at­ed land­fills. To­day, mu­nic­i­pal sol­id waste is in­creas­ing­ly viewed as a po­ten­tial re­source of al­ter­na­tive fu­el and there is a strong trend to­ward re­cy­cling, com­posit­ing and com­bus­tion tech­nolo­gies. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the dri­ve to pro­tect the en­vi­ron­ment the Seoul Met­ro­pol­i­tan Gov­ern­ment trans­formed one of its biggest land­fills lo­cat­ed in Na­ji­do, an is­land on a branch of the Han Riv­er of Seoul, Ko­rea. Once a beau­ti­ful is­land known for its ar­ray of flow­ers, cab­bage, radish, can­taloupes and peanuts which were wide­ly cul­ti­vat­ed, Na­ji­do be­came Seoul's of­fi­cial dump site at the end of the 1970's. For 15 years, this is­land was trans­formed in­to a huge moun­tain of garbage which de­pict­ed a mir­ror im­age of a pyra­mid, 34 times larg­er than The Great Pyra­mid of Giza in Egypt. This land­fill site was the an­swer to the waste dis­pos­al prob­lem that arose, due to the rapid de­vel­op­ment of Seoul in­to a met­ro­pol­i­tan city.

How­ev­er, in 1993 when city of­fi­cials re­alised that the site could no longer fa­cil­i­tate the city's ex­pan­sion, Nan­ji­do stopped op­er­at­ing as a waste dump­site. It was World Cup 2002 that led to the re­birth of Nan­ji­do as an eco-friend­ly area. The con­struc­tion of the World Cup Sta­di­um was ac­com­pa­nied by the area's trans­for­ma­tion in­to an "eco-park". It was at this point, the Seoul gov­ern­ment be­gan to re­think their plans for Nan­ji­do which led to the de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jor Land­fill Re­cov­ery Project. The goals of this ma­jor ini­tia­tive have been to re­store the ecosys­tems of the once-beau­ti­ful is­land of Nan­ji­do. This project fo­cused on four ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment: • Top soil lev­el­ling and Soil-Re­cov­ery. • Leachate Treat­ment.

• Ex­trac­tion and Re­cy­cling of Land­fill Gas. • Slope Sta­bil­i­sa­tion. This mas­ter plan com­menced in 1994, with the com­ple­tion of fa­cil­i­ties for ex­trac­tion and dis­pos­al of gas and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter. Methane was one of the ma­jor gas­es gen­er­at­ed from the Nan­ji­do land­fill. Ko­rea has a rapid­ly grow­ing econ­o­my that de­pends ex­ten­sive­ly on im­port­ed fu­els which ac­counts for 98 per cent of its en­er­gy use. As a re­sult, Ko­rea has a com­pelling need to de­vel­op al­ter­nate fu­el sources to en­hance its en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty, econ­o­my and en­vi­ron­ment.

In this re­gard, the city of Seoul in­stalled 100 methane gas ex­trac­tion wells at the for­mer Nan­ji­do land­fill site. To­day, util­is­ing gas­es from vi­able land­fill sites has been an emerg­ing busi­ness in the South Ko­re­an's sol­id waste treat­ment mar­ket. Sub­se­quent to clo­sure of the Nan­ji­do land­fill in 1993, the waste was cov­ered with a 1-me­tre lay­er of soil main­ly to block the odours. It was on­ly then that the re­ju­ve­na­tion of the soil cre­at­ed life once more, bring­ing to ex­is­tence nat­u­ralised plants which de­vel­oped from seeds found in waste that usu­al­ly grew well in dry soils. Na­ji­do has now turned green since the Land­fill Re­cov­ery Project be­gan. Un­touched by hu­mans, an­i­mals be­gan to vis­it Nan­ji­do and this soon be­came a sanc­tu­ary for their gath­er­ing. Al­so, in the win­ter sea­son, this brought mi­gra­to­ry birds to this new­ly re­ju­ve­nat­ed land­mass. The ex­is­tence of this amaz­ing de­vel­op­ment led to the re­birth of an eco friend­ly park that soon resided on the is­land of Nan­ji­do. Cur­rent­ly, this area of 2.8 mil­lion square me­ters was trans­formed in­to five dif­fer­ent theme parks equipped with con­ser­va­tion fa­cil­i­ties for fur­ther re­vival of the di­ver­si­fied eco­log­i­cal sys­tem. New­ly named World Cup Park en­com­pass­es small parks such as the Peace Park, Ha­neul Park, Noeul Park, Nan­jicheon Park and Nan­ji Hangang Park.

Cur­rent­ly, Nan­ji­do is un­der­go­ing the last stage of the Land­fill Re­cov­ery Project which is the Land Sta­bil­i­sa­tion process, and is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by the year 2020. This process con­sists of the con­struc­tion of walls, deep in­to the ground in­tend­ed to pre­vent the seep­age of con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter in­to the Han Riv­er and streams. Methane and oth­er gas­es were chan­nelled in­to wells to pro­vide heat­ing for the World Cup Sta­di­um and the sur­round­ing res­i­den­tial ar­eas. To­day, the World Cup Park at­tracts 9.8 mil­lion vis­i­tors an­nu­al­ly. The clean air and re­fresh­ing wa­ters of the Hangang Riv­er, the flow­ers and trees liv­ing in har­mo­ny with the an­i­mals, rep­re­sent noth­ing short of a spec­tac­u­lar en­vi­ron­men­tal re­new­al. South Ko­rea's de­vel­op­ment of a ma­jor land­fill has since been a scenic ex­pe­ri­ence which re­mains as a mod­el for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.