Do you remember this garbage mountain in Uiseong, Gyeongbuk?



Last year was 2018.

It was one of the neglected garbage secretly dumped as domestic garbage overflowed due to China's total ban on waste imports.



This mountain of garbage has now disappeared like this.



It was said that it would take over 7 years to process, but in reality it was all cleared up in 1 year and 8 months.



Where did all the garbage weighing over 200,000 tons go?



A cement factory in Gangwon-do.

Trucks are waiting in line.



Loaded on the truck are various wastes collected from all over the country.



Four years ago, half of the waste mountain in Uiseong was moved to cement factories across the country.



Enlarging an image


Why are you bringing in so much garbage?

This is to use it as a fuel instead of the bituminous coal used in the past.



In the past, waste had to be purchased at high prices, but the situation reversed after the garbage crisis 4 years ago.



Rather than receiving money from waste companies, this became a major source of income for cement companies.



In the case of Ssangyong C&E, the largest in the industry, cement sales plummeted 15% in four years due to a slowdown in the construction economy, but garbage import sales tripled during the same period.



They even won awards for solving environmental problems.



It aims to be reborn as an eco-friendly company that solves the problem of waste by removing its stigma as a pollution industry.



Ssangyong plans to convert 100% of the bituminous coal fuel used so far into waste, etc. from 2030.



But is this process of burning waste to make cement really eco-friendly?



Similarly, we compared it to an existing incinerator that burns garbage.



When burning the same volume of garbage, nitrogen oxide, an air pollutant, was produced 16 times more in a kiln burning cement fuel than in a general incinerator. Why is that?



[Seungdo Kim / Professor Emeritus of Environmental Biotechnology, Hallym University: (Incinerator operates at 820℃ ) Cement kiln operates at 1,500℃.

The amount of nitrogen oxide generated exponentially (increases) when it is around 1,500℃]



Currently, the allowable amount of nitrogen oxide emissions from cement kilns is more than five times looser than that of general incinerators.



So what about cement products made from this waste?



Currently, the content of hexavalent chromium, a first-class carcinogen, among the components of cement products has a voluntary industry compliance standard.



However, when measured with a European test method with a different test method, it was found that the amount of hexavalent chromium detected in three domestic cement products exceeded the EU standard.



[Roh Woong-rae / Democratic Party member (2nd of last month): (Compared to the European standard), it is detected more than 4.5 times.

Hexavalent chromium class 1 carcinogen.

Is there a problem with this?

(Minister of Environment Han Hwa-jin: Yes, there is.)]



The Ministry of Environment is in the process of preparing a legal standard for the content of hazardous substances in cement products beyond the industry voluntary standards.



Of course, developed countries also use a lot of waste in cement production.



However, the regulations, including the types of waste that can be used, are much stronger than ours.



The domestic cement industry is also researching high-efficiency purification technology to meet stringent environmental standards, but it is like, blindly increasing the use of waste and looking for alternatives late.



If we postpone specific pollution prevention measures and only advertise as a garbage solver, it will be difficult to avoid in the future, pointing out that it is only camouflaged eco-friendly and 'green washing'.



(Planning: Jo Ji-hyun, Composition: Shin Hee-suk, Video coverage: Kim Won-bae, Kang Dong-cheol, Cho Chang-hyeon, Kim Min-cheol, Video editing: Ha Seong-won, VJ: Jeong Young-sam, CG: Ban So-hee, Seo Dong-min, Jeon Yu-geun)