India, Aug. 20 -- South Korea threw away 7.8 million tonnes of household and commercial plastic in 2024. In 2022, the country generated 103.9 kilogrammes of plastic waste per person, the second-highest figure in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and more than twice the group average.

For years, Seoul reported that it recycled about 73 per cent of that plastic. In 2023, researchers at Chungnam National University working with Greenpeace asked a narrower question: Of the household plastic that people had washed, stripped of labels and sorted for recycling, how much actually came back as plastic? For 2021, the answer was 16.4 per cent, about a third burnt, an eighth landfilled.

Both numbers are true. What si...