Welcome to Conservation -or- How I Learned to Love the Planet

Our Apartment Complex

The family has finally settled down in Korea. After almost a month of travel between Plymouth, MN and our new home in Pyongtaek City we finally have a home. It took 3 planes, innumerable taxis and buses, 2 hotel rooms, 3 realtors, 29 days, 4.33 million Korean Won (Just in rent and deposit - there was much more money in both Korean and American denominations spent up until now) and at least one pair of sandals used up to get us to this point. All of that and we still have one cat still stuck in the US until the average daily temperature in Minneapolis, Detroit, Tokyo and Seoul is below 85 degrees Fahrenheit for the two days required to ship said cat from Minnesota to Korea. (Dear Mom and Dad, thanks for dealing with the whiny and mass-quantities of poop-producing cat. As soon as we can get him out of your house we will) But for the most part we're here and what a "here" it is.

It's summer time in Korea and we're in the middle of the monsoon season so my typical day runs something like this: wake up and look out my 13th floor window and realize I can't see more than 200 meters due to fog/99.9% humidity. Get out of bed and take a quick (and mostly pointless) shower only to be covered in a thin coating of sweat the moment I set foot out the door. Walk to the bus stop and pray that the light sprinkles I am feeling do not turn in to a deluge. Take the Number 20 bus from in front of my house to the front of Camp Humphreys all the while taking note of the locals doing their best to pretend to ignore the fully uniformed 6-foot tall, blond American soldier riding the bus before 6am. Walk from the gate to my office and most likely get completely soaked by the rain that couldn't wait 15 minutes for me to get in the office. Meanwhile back at the apartment Jenn and the kids get some breakfast, study some Korean or some math, run to Lotte Mart/the gym/the commissary/Seoul/etc. and wait for me to get back home. After work I usually attempt to catch a ride back to our house with a co-worker. The family then sits down to a nice meal of hybrid American/Korean cuisine or we'll order in some Chinese food and when I cannot stand it anymore I'll shut up the house and fire up the Air Conditioner. The reason that I wait so long to fire up the A/C is the main reason behind today's blog: Conservation.

Before I start I have to admit that I am one of the most non-conservation-minded people I know. Whether it's the 3 cars that all averaged less than 20mpg, the 4,000 sf house that I attempted to keep toasty warm in the winter and ice-cold during the summer, my inability to separate the trash into recyclable/non-recyclable, long hot showers, watering the lawn even during near-drought conditions, buying too much perishable food from Costco and then tossing more than half of it, buying too much junk and then tossing it in the trash... you get the picture. I am a wasteful person. Or at least I was until I moved to a country where space is at a premium and wastefulness is saddled with an HEFTY financial penalty. So, welcome to the new and improved environmentally-conscious Etchy. Wait... let me be honest: welcome to the new and improved FINANCIALLY-conscious Etchy. The environment is just benefiting from my unwillingness to pay a crap-ton of money MORE in order to be your stereotypical wasteful American.

It started with the air conditioning and that's probably the hardest pill to swallow. I am a hardy Minnesota-grown boy and if there's one thing I always had when growing up it was a cool place to hide out in the summer. Our basement was always 10-15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house and on the brutally hot and humid days in July and August the basement was the place to get some respite from the heat. Once I got older and started to make some money I always made sure there was ample cash available for environmental conditioning i.e. A/C in the summer. But Korea is not the United States and whereas in the US we have flat rate electricity costs that are relatively low Korea has relatively high rates that are on a ramped-up scale. So if I use 100kWh I may be charged 200,000 Korean Won. But if I use 200kWh I could get charged 600,000 Korean won. That is because at certain levels of usage the cost per kWh goes up - and it's not just one bracket. There are five or six brackets (so I've been told. I'm still waiting on my first electricity bill so I can see this scale on the back) and each one is significantly higher than the one below it. So I save the A/C for cooling our room for sleeping or when we're entertaining guests. But it's not just electricity. Water is expensive (despite all of it hanging out in the local atmosphere), natural gas is expensive, fuel for the car is expensive (I spent the equivalent of $35 on gas to get 1/2 a tank of gas), transportation is expensive (the family has easily spent over $300 on transportation fees getting to and from Seoul and around town in Pyongtaek over the course of the last month), and garbage is expensive. Yes, you read that right: garbage is expensive. And time consuming.

I live in an 18-floor apartment complex. Each floor has at least 4 apartments and there are at least 12 different buildings in my complex. This is pretty normal for most of urban Korea and since about 90% of Koreans live in an urban environment this could be considered THE standard way of life here. If this was the United States there would be a giant series of dumpsters located somewhere on the property and every few mornings I would take my big bag of trash down the elevator on my way to work and toss it in the dumpster for the nice garbage man to take away. But this is not America. Here there is a shack on one end of the parking lot outside my building. In that shack there are over 20 different garbage pails and each pail has a specific purpose. Some are for food wastes (neatly discarded in 5L orange plastic bags that you buy from the local grocery store), some are for Soju bottles, some are for beer bottles, some are for other glass bottles, some are for general plastic, some are for plastic soda bottles, some are for plastic drinking yogurt containers, some are for paper. Some are for aluminum cans, some are for tin cans, some are for plastic bags, and some (these are the important ones) are for "general trash". The general trash bins are not inside the shack and I think the reason why is either shame or fear. You see the general trash is to be thrown out ONLY in white plastic bags purchased from the grocery store. These bags are regulated in price and there is a nearly $1,000 fine for throwing out trash without using the bag. So "shame or fear" involved is that you will feel shamed by your neighbors for being too cheap to buy the bags (You can get a package of 15 bags that are 10L in size for 5,000 Korean Won which is around $4) or fear that your neighbors will rat you out and you'll be forced to pay the fine. Either way the general trash bins are in a high visibility area whereas the financially less/un-important bins are inside the shack. (A word about the food waste bins: Yes, there are bags that you are supposed to use for food wastes. We have been diligently using these bags and getting extremely messy and irritated while get the food wastes from our dehydrator into the tiny opening of the 5L bags. Today I went out to toss the food wastes into the proper bin and discovered that no one actually uses the food waste bags... I feel a moral dilemma brewing.) The amazing thing to me (the lazy non-recycling American) is that for the most part people actually separate their trash properly. The yogurt-container bin had yogurt bottles, the Soju bottles were in the proper bin and the other glass was in that proper bin. Other than the non-use of the orange bags for food wastes everything was in proper order. Wow.

So I am learning. I am adapting and the family is adapting with me. Jenn grew up here and is familiar with the trash sorting ways and pointed out the trash bags in the grocery store and the kids are young enough where it's not too hard for them to change. The only stubborn one is me and I'd like to think I am coming around rather quickly. I am trying to be as "Korean" as possible when dealing with my neighbors and this is one way I feel I am joining the collective. In fact right now it's 9:36 pm and all my windows are open and no A/C is running despite the really high humidity and 85+ degree temps. I am also seriously looking at buying a Daewoo Matiz as my daily driver (think Chevy Aveo and shrink the engine from a 2.4L to an 800cc motor, take away significant crash safety specs and you have a Matiz) since it gets an easy 50MPG in city driving. It's one more way that I can start to abandon my wasteful past and embrace a more economical, environmentally friendly, and respectful way of life - or at least save some cash.

The white plastic garbage bags. Use these or garner the ire of your neighbors and local authorities

For the first time in my life I care that my A/C is environmentally friendly because that means it's wallet-friendly, too.

This is a food-waste dehydrator. It's an amazing device that turns banana peels into banana crusts overnight with NO smell. There was quite a bit of faith put into practice when I started dumping all manner of food waste into this thing.