Recently, as I was walking around my house in Jeju, I realized there were tons of trashes on the streets. And I was concerned about how fast the trashes grew, and the bad views it gave to our streets. I have seen some cleaning ladies picking up trashes, but day by day, even though many people were picking them up, the trashes only grew. Going beyond the concern of bad views and fast growing trashes, the streets started to stink.
 
[Picture of a sidewalk]
I thought about the problem, and I wanted to find out reason why. Then, my winter break started. I had no choice, but to leave my house in Jeju and go back to my house in Seoul to study for my upcoming tests. And last week, I went to my father’s hospital, which is located in Seocho-gu. My first impression of the city was ambivalent. When I was riding to my father’s hospital, going past the Gangnam-daero I didn’t see lots of trashes, but as I was about to arrive to the hospital, I could see trashes. I was panicked by this experience, because I never thought that a city, bombarded with people could be cleaner than the streets around my house in Jeju. In shock, I researched about this situation, and I found out that the main problem could be ‘trash cans’.
 
[Picture of Gangnam by Asia Economics]
Gangnam-daero, divides Gangnam-dong and Seocho-dong. And the significant difference was that they were each controlled by Gangnam-gu and Seocho-gu. From 2012, the Seocho-gu’s trash cans were all removed by the complaints that said trash cans were causing trashes to grow in streets, and ergo almost all of the trash cans on streets were removed in Seocho-gu. On the other hand, Gangnam-gu still has a lot of trash cans, they had 934 trash cans in 2016, and they clean them every two days. As a result, the small trashes were stacked in Seocho-dong and the trashes were removed in Gangnam-dong.
 
After I got the idea of this situation, I wondered why people of Seocho-gu made complaints, and thought that trash cans were the cause of dirty city. I thought that the problem was that people’ stereotype that trash cans are making the city dirty. So, by the help of my friend, I interviewed him first, and searched for numbers of trash cans on streets around our school.
 
Do you prefer to have trash cans on streets?
No, trash cans are going to make the streets dirtier.
 
Would you want more trash cans on streets?
No! As I said trash cans are going to make our city dirtier, because more trashes will be there.
 
Why do you think we are keep having more trashes even though we don’t have trash cans?
I think that having more trashes would be causing our street to have dirty floors, because there are more trashes in the streets, which people will be throwing into trash can.
 
In conclusion, I found out that it was a stereotype that trash cans would make the city dirtier. After the interview, I told him my friend with the theory I discovered, and convinced him. His idea of the trash cans was wrong, since the amount of trashes people are going to throw away wouldn’t be increasing by having trash cans. After I convinced my friend, we walked around my school and house and counted the numbers of trash cans. We found out there were none in the streets and only one or two next to small stores. Therefore, I thought that the reason for this situation is the absence of trash cans and we have to take actions before it’s too late.
 
 
 








Kim Dongki 
Grade 10
Korea international School Jeju
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