Jeju Island says no to disposable cups

Known as Korea's tourist paradise, Jeju Island welcomes an average of more than 15 million tourists each year. There are about 63 million disposable drinking cups thrown away from the 1,856 cafes here. With the above figures, Jeju ranks first in Korea with 25.4 places per 10,000 people (the national average is 14.7 places).

This is the reason why the startup group called “Jeju Blue Cup” (blue-painted stainless steel drinking cups) was selected by the Korean Ministry of Labor and Employment as a social entrepreneur support project in 2021. The project will provide a service to lend multi-purpose cups to tourists when traveling on Jeju Island.

Visitors to Jeju Island can easily find and rent “blue cups” at eco-friendly cafes and stores across the island by scanning the QR code with their phones. Furthermore, when using “blue cups”, visitors will enjoy attractive discounts when purchasing drinks at all participating stores.

According to Ms. Han Jeong-hee, Executive Director of the project, because recycling requires a lot of energy and processes, reuse will gradually become more popular. She added: “There have been many cases where consumers were forced to use eco-bags instead of plastic bags, but in fact, people's awareness has changed a lot since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out."

After testing this new service from 2021 at Jeju International Airport, from the initial 30 by the end of April 2022, more than 900 cafes have participated in the “Jeju Blue Cup” project, contributing to the reduction of more than 2,500 disposable cups in 2021.

This is truly a positive step for environmental protection as up to 98% of respondents confirmed that they would reuse the "blue cup". In particular, when asked about the reason for reusing the "blue cup", many people answered "because I can participate in protecting the Jeju environment".

Duc Huy