Language:
Search
 

Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea

The Problem

Korean society has achieved rapid economic growth and development in a short period of time, which has led it to suffer from environmental pollution at the same time. With the growing attention to the environment, the environmental damage caused by waste has been a subject of sustainable management and inspection. In particular, the proper treatment of waste has emerged as an important criterion for maintaining a pleasant environment and enhancing quality of life.

To that end, since 1999 the Ministry of Environment of Korea has implemented the “Waste Disposal Verification System” using paper vouchers. However, it did have some shortcomings in that every party in charge of discharge, transportation, and disposal of wastes should make and exchange as many as 5.2 million vouchers a year spending more than 100 billion won.(100 million USD)

Therefore, in 2001, the Ministry developed the “Electronic Waste Manifest System” that automatically manages the whole process from discharge to final treatment of wastes using the Internet. In 2002, it began its operation on the designated waste and since then has extended the application to about 35,000 waste dischargers dealing with industrial and construction waste.

The system has developed a computer infrastructure for making/storing paper statements, making waste management ledgers, and reporting the waste discharge and treatment. It has also enabled administrative organizations to enhance transparency of waste treatment process, reduce costs, and save labor, thereby improving business productivity.

Even though the development and operating of the system has encountered a lot of difficulties, we believe that the positive fruits born out of it like business effectiveness and labor and cost reduction can fully offset those problems.

As we are now introducing our system, we hope that it will set an example that other organizations and countries want to follow.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
In order to collectively manage and inspect the process of discharge, transport, and disposal of waste, the Ministry of Environment introduced the “Waste Disposal Verification System” in 1999. According to the system, those in charge of waste discharge, transport, and disposal were required to make out and hand out six waste handover statements for each process so that the administrative organizations were able to look at the waste management status. However, it had some disadvantages in terms of time and money, as it required a lot of manual work and wasted numerous resources. Therefore, illegal discharge of waste became a chronic problem.

To cope with this problem, we had interest in establishing the Waste Disposal Verification System based on the Internet which can overcome the limitation of time and space, and developed the internet-based “Waste Manifest System”.

The system enabled us to check the whole process from generation to final disposal of wastes on a real-time basis and prevent illegal disposal and generation of neglected wastes. It has also contributed to improving competitiveness through reduction of labor and costs. As of 2005, 20 businesses were suspected of illegally disposing waste and subjected to administrative measures such as operation suspension as a result of the site investigation by the administrative organization.

The WMS (Waste Manifest System) has also developed in terms of number of users and functions. In the beginning of its operation, the number of the users was 1,500, but has increased by 13 times to about 20,000. In addition, over 80% of the infectious and designated wastes are managed through the system.
Also, the system eliminated the manual paper work. As a result, the users of the system were able to save ￦120 billion(120 million USD) and 9.8 million hours per year by computerizing the administrative work and not using paper vouchers.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Mar 2000 : Established a plan for informatization project for waste management
Jun 2000 : Designated as a project for government support (related to waste)
Sep 2000 – Sep 2001: Waste Manifest System
Developed the Handover Management System (1st stage)
Sep 2001 – Aug 2002: Pilot operation of the Handover Management System (1,500 businesses)
Aug 27, 2002: Enacted and implemented the Notification of Operation and Use of the Waste Handover Management System
Aug 29, 2002: Normal operation of the Waste Handover Management System (1st subscribers) – 1,500 dischargers of designated wastes of over 200 ton per year
May – Nov 2003: Waste Manifest System
Developed the Waste Approval/Permission and Analysis System
Jun 30, 2003: Expanded the users of the Waste Handover Management System
- 7,400 dischargers of designated wastes of over 100 kg per month
Feb 2004 – Dec 2005: Pilot operation of the Waste Approval/Permission
- 4,200 businesses under the jurisdiction of Gyeongin and Jeonju regional environment offices
Sep 3 – Nov 11, 2004: Waste Manifest System
Developed the Disaster Recovery System
Oct 29, 2004 : Expanded the 3rd stage users of the Handover Management System
- Designated and general waste dischargers (20,000 businesses)
Sep 30, 2005 : Expanded the 4th stage users of the Handover Management System
- Designated, general, and construction waste dischargers (35,000 businesses)
Jan 24, 2006: Normal operation of the Waste Approval and Permission Application Handling System
Expanded the system to all local governments
Apr 1, 2006: Established the Infectious Waste Control System based on RFID

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
In Korea, due to the increase of business activities and expansion of the economy, the annual quantity of the local industrial waste has been on continuous rise annually by over 6%, and is now estimated to reach over 90 million tons. Some wicked businesses illegally dispose industrial wastes, which causes environmental contamination, damages the health of nearby residents, and further makes the nation bear the costs for disposal of neglected wastes.

Under this circumstance, management and supervision of the illegal disposal of wastes was essentially required, but the administrative organizations had limitations in managing and supervising discharge, transportation and disposal of wastes 24 hours a day. Thus, as a solution to this, “the Waste Disposal Verification System” through paper voucher was introduced and executed in 1999. According to the system, the waste discharge businesses were required to make out a paper voucher of ‘waste handover statement’, and then, it was handed out to every party in charge of collection/transportation/disposal and to the administrative office in order to verify disposal of wastes and to report the disposal results to the administrative organizations.

However, the system had some disadvantages in terms of time and money. That is, since the businesses involved in discharge, transportation and treatment of wastes had to handwrite and deliver paper vouchers on the quantity, transportation vehicle and treatment place of wastes, it was inconvenient for them to take and make it out while they were busy transporting and treating wastes. In addition, the system was also ineffective to administrative organizations because it produced excessive paper vouchers and required postage cost for delivery of the vouchers. Thus, it caused complicated administrative procedures of managing, checking and reviewing the paper vouchers. In fact, it was impossible to check millions of waste handover statements annually, and it required a lot of manual work and wasted numerous resources, which caused other problems.
Therefore, the Ministry of Environment devoted itself to developing a new technology and system that can check the waste treatment routes on a real-time basis, prevent illegal treatment of wastes in advance, and simplify the administrative process. In March 2000, we proposed the internet-based waste manifest system as a ‘National Informatization Project’, which was designated as a project very likely to succeed. As a result, the Ministry developed the Electronic Waste Manifest System that is convenient for the relevant administrative organizations and every party involved in discharge, transportation and treatment of wastes and that can check the whole process from discharge of wastes to final treatment on the Internet on a real time basis.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The purpose of the system is first, to enhance transparency and reduce cost and resources by streamlining administrative work for waste treatment and second, to serve as a comprehensive waste management information system that can be utilized for statistics and policy data through scientific and systematic management of industrial waste.
To that end, the WMS (Waste Manifest System) has 4 functions as a system. First, it includes the Waste Handover Management System that registers, checks, and manages the process of waste handover and undertaking via the Internet. The system, a basic pillar of the WMS, is an internet-based version of the previous “Waste Disposal Verification System.” According to this system, those in charge of discharge, transportation, and disposal of wastes are required to input the whole process into the system. The administrative organization can follow the whole process as they can see the data and check if there are some errors in the process.
In addition, the WMS has the Waste Approval and Permission System for applying, changing, and authorizing waste-related approval and permission. The system makes it easy to register the information and give permission online, which previously depended on manual work like post mail and personal visits. In the past, work involved in ‘Waste Disposal Change Plan’ and ‘Report of Industrial Waste Dischargers’ accounted for 80 percent of the approval and permission process. However, by computerizing this process, the work productivity could be improved. As a result, as for the total waste approval and permission of the Environmental Office in 2005, 76% of the total waste disposal plan was handled by this system. As such, computerization of this process contributed to enhancing the administrative process and the database of approval and permission work paved the way for establishing a management system for scientific statistics.
Furthermore, the WMS includes the Waste Information Analysis System that analyzes the registered waste information in real time and picks out businesses suspected of illegal disposal. The system enables the administrative organizations to analyze the waste handover information multidimensionally and easily checks the process of waste discharge, transport, and disposal. The data can also be utilized for decision and policymaking processes for waste management.
In addition, we employed the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) for infectious waste management system. The high technology simplified computerized input of data and advanced the system’s operation. It is applied to various industries including environment, national defense, procurement, construction, and transportation. By introducing this technology to infectious waste management, the pilot operation was completed for clinics and hospitals, and we plan to expand the operation to all hospitals.
In the process of discharging, collecting, transporting, and disposing infectious waste using the RFID, the reader reads the information in electronic-magnetic tag attached on the exclusive container of infectious waste at one time. In 2005, the technology was applied to the WMS for highly infectious waste. Primarily, this system was applied to 40 hospitals including Dongguk University Hospital to test real-time transmission of 70,000 data, and as a result of the test, it was considered acceptable for normal operation, and has been now working well.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Businesses using the system were basically reluctant to disclose the information to administrative organizations and many of them were not familiar with the Internet. Therefore, various strategies were required to encourage businesses to use the system. In particular, we believe the following four strategies we employed were effective.
First, we made efforts to expand incentives for those who use the system. In fact, businesses and their management system were familiar with the use of paper vouchers. Moreover, since the system is not a legal regulation with binding force, we cannot force but only encourage them to use it by offering incentives. For example, as we considered that the system users already disclose their waste treatment process to monitoring organizations, we allowed them to get inspected only once not twice a year. We also created a menu on our homepage, which enabled the subscribers to submit their annual performance report to the Environmental Office through this WMS. In addition, we developed a system to automatically create a waste management ledger so that it would be more convenient for the businesses.
Second, we established a channel to gather comments from the users during the system’s expansion, and actively reflected them in the system.
We established a CRM-based customer counseling center and conducted scientific analysis of the telephone counseling contents so that we could determine what they wanted and reflected their comments in the system’s operation. Based on such comments, we have continued to eliminate weak points from the system. So far, a total of 120 cases have been corrected or modified from the early stage of the operation.
For example, a survey showed that most large businesses were reluctant to use the WMS because they operate their own computer system and did not want to duplicate data input. Thus, we are establishing a XML/EDI linkage program to link the data of their in-house system and of our WMS.
In order to actively gather the comments of users and study the way for improvement of the system, in 2006 we have been carrying out BPR (Business Process Reengineering) & ISP (Information Strategy Plan) to examine the development method for an optimum system by analyzing the work process based on the development plan of the WMS that was conducted in 2005.
Third, we established various channels to access the system in order to promote the users’ convenience. In the early stage of the system’s operation, educational and promotional efforts were absolutely required to publicize the purpose and method of the system’s use to our would-be subscribers. We adopted customized educational and promotional services in which everyone can participate.
We have provided various educational and promotional services depending on the users' characteristics, which include field service that is performed on the jobsite, distribution of video training, and real-time online education in which all the people can participate without restrictions in time and place.
To allow more convenience in the system’s registration by small businesses who were not fully equipped with the Internet and the transporting/disposal businesses who needed prompt input of computer information, we constructed the ARS system with which they could register the data on waste handover by phone without access to the Internet.
Also, to diversify the supporting method, we operated Call-Back Service, a 24-hour consulting system, in order to provide seamless consulting services around the clock, and informed them on how to use the Internet by remotely controlling the users’ screen.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The WMS completely changed the working pattern of the businesses involved in discharge, transportation and treatment of wastes. Above all, they were able to remarkably save time and money by managing their work on the Internet instead of creating, classifying and managing paper vouchers by hand.
In addition, it became possible to make ledgers and handle performance reports on the system, which had been recorded and kept separately in the past. Consequently, the waste management process became computerized and automated.

The administrative organizations could check and manage about 30 million paper vouchers per year on the Internet so they were able to reduce the work of detecting and guiding the businesses that are likely to illegally treat wastes. They could also monitor the status of production, moving and treatment of wastes by region and waste type on a real-time basis so a useful information analysis system was prepared. Before this system was developed, the monitoring work had been carried out only on random samples or as a result of a report by residents. But, after this system was introduced, those generating errors were identified by the system, and they were subject to guidance, which remarkably changed the work pattern of the monitoring organizations.

One of the most remarkable effects was that the system provided reliability, accuracy and promptness of the statistical work as the statistics of the waste treatment results could be automatically totaled. In the past, the reliability of statistical data was in question since some of them were incomplete or wrong as they were made based on hand-written waste treatment performance reports. In contrast, the statistical data on the WMS is used as the basic data to establish proper waste policies and made a big contribution to successful policy enforcement.
Previously there was a big gap between the reality and the status of the waste of businesses since it was difficult for the managing organization to rapidly know the abolishment, bankruptcy, or change of waste of relevant businesses. However, now as the information on the status of businesses is promptly received on the system, the data from the WMS is recognized as the most reliable. In conclusion, the Waste Manifest System has brought great innovation to the work process of waste-related businesses and the administrative organizations, and contributed to reducing time and money and improving the quality of public service.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
The use of the system has been expanded among not only businesses but also administrative organizations managing the waste. It was applied in the 1st stage to 1,500 businesses discharging designated waste, and expanded to other businesses discharging, transporting and disposing not only designated waste but also industrial waste, and further constructional waste. This is unprecedented, even in other countries who adopted Internet-based waste management systems. This is thanks to a dedicated effort to apply different laws depending on the increase of waste and to satisfy demands of businesses. In the future, based on the Internet and RFID technology, we plan to advance the system to deal with not only currently managed infectious waste but also hazardous waste and PCB.

In addition, our case was evaluated as a successful example and became a benchmark for other organizations and countries. This year JWNET, the E-Manifest operating organization in Japan, visited our Ministry to learn how the WMS made rapid growth in a short period of time. Concrete negotiations to identify advantages of each other’s system were made during the visit.
Furthermore, the VEPA (Vietnam Environment Protection Agency), a central environmental office in Vietnam, requested “support to develop a waste management system for hazardous wastes in Vietnam”, and consultations have been underway between the two parties. As an MOU on International Environmental Cooperation between ENVICO and VEPA was made to support for the waste manifest system of Vietnam, we will serve as joint developer of the E-Manifest project of the nation and cooperating partner who will conduct a feasibility study and provide consultations. As such, the WMS is a benchmark to other countries as a successful system.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The Waste Manifest System, since it developed in 2001, has made continuous growth in terms of the expansion of system users and functions. However, it went through a lot of difficulties because the infrastructures and personnel of waste-related organizations had been familiar with the use of paper vouchers for long.
The first difficulty we faced was to construct the infrastructure suitable to the Internet environment. In order for businesses to use this Internet-based system, they also needed to be equipped with the Internet. However, unlike the businesses involved in general service and office work that already used the Internet, the waste-related businesses were mostly small so many of them didn't have even computers in their office. There was also limit in providing the Internet or computers to them. For those businesses, we activated the registration agency system using fax. Korea Environment & Resources Corporation, the operating organization of the system, received the request for registration of a handover statement, made input of it on computer and completed the registration by fax or phone. In addition, we put our focus on diversifying the way of access to the system, for example, constructing ARS system to make the handover statements registered through a mobile phone that almost all the people in Korea have.

Another obstacle to settle the system was that the businesses were reluctant to disclose their information. When they had used the paper handover voucher, they could manipulate the waste quantity since the voucher was checked at the administrative organization after the final treatment of waste. But with the Waste Manifest System, the organizations could check the whole procedures so the businesses didn't want to use the system. Therefore, we prepared various countermeasures to encourage them to use it.
Above all, we made them know that if they properly manage the waste, only the use of the system will not ever compromise their interests. Also, any input errors were informed through SMS of mobile phones in advance so the users could use the system with no worry.

Finally, the greatest difficulty in activating the system was to provide education and support to those who were not familiar with the Internet. Those involved in waste-related jobs were mostly older than those in other fields and poor at using the Internet and computer. Thus we provided them with various educational programs such as video training on the Internet, real-time on-line education, practical computer class, and field study in order for them to learn how to use the system anywhere anytime. Among 35,000 subscribers, 7,344 businesses attended the field study, 120,000 businesses video training, and 500 businesses online educations. In total, 162,344 businesses were trained so far, which means a business participated in at least 4 times of education.

As a result of continuous support, the businesses became positive to the use of the system, and the number of the subscribers has continued to increase. Consequently, we were able to make a great success that now over 80% of the businesses discharging hazardous wastes (designated and infectious wastes) use the system.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea
Institution Type:   Government Department  
Contact Person:   yong-jin Kim
Title:   Industrial Waste Management Division  
Telephone/ Fax:   82-2-2110-6938
Institution's / Project's Website:   82-2-2110-4386
E-mail:   rjkim@me.go.kr  
Address:   Gwacheon Government Complex, 1, Joogang-dong, Gwacheon-si Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea
Postal Code:   427-729
City:   Gwacheon
State/Province:  
Country:  

          Go Back
Print friendly Page