A volunteer dries off a water gun discarded after the Waterbomb festival at the office of nonprofit organization TRU in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, on July 10.

From July 4 to 6, the outdoor stage of KINTEX in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, hosted Waterbomb Seoul 2025, a water-themed music festival featuring K-pop and hip-hop performances. Tens of thousands of attendees beat the heat by shooting toy water guns while enjoying the music. However, after the event, the water guns left behind sparked controversy online. Critics argued that the plastic waste undermined the meaning of the festival.

This year, though, such concerns may prove unfounded. On July 13, the festival organizers and TRU, a nonprofit environmental organization specializing in toy recycling, announced that the water guns used at the event would be either reused or recycled.

According to the organizers, they worked with TRU from as early as April to develop a plan to reuse or recycle the discarded water guns, in order to avoid them being incinerated as waste. Of the approximately 1,500 water guns collected at the festival, about one-third will be donated to local children's centers. Some requests for donations even came from groups like Farmers Market Marche, which promotes zero-waste markets and cited a need for water guns “to help beat the summer heat.”

Water guns that cannot be reused are sent for recycling. At TRU’s office in Goyang on July 10, volunteers were busy drying the water guns with towels. Once dried, the water guns were sorted by size and color, then disassembled. Compared to other toys, water guns are relatively easy to take apart. Most toys are considered “complex plastic waste” due to their small size and multiple components like screws, motors, and rubber. But the disassembled water guns from Waterbomb contained mostly plastic parts, aside from 22 screws and the pump section. Disassembly took less than five minutes. “Dark navy plastic is actually quite rare,” said Park Jun-sung, secretary general of TRU. “Toys tend to be bright and shiny in color, so darker tones are considered valuable.”

The disassembled plastics, once sorted by color, are shredded into pellets. These can be compressed with heat to create plastic sheets for various uses. Waterbomb and TRU plan to repurpose the material into a photo zone installation for future festivals, possibly at Waterbomb Busan on July 26 or Waterbomb Sokcho on August 23.

Still, some experts emphasize the need to reduce single-use plastic in the first place. Hong Su-yeol, director of the Resource and Circular Economy Research Institute, said, “While the organizers were not entirely dismissive of environmental concerns, there is also the aspect of encouraging people to ‘feel free to throw away’ the water guns.” He suggested alternatives such as “rental systems with deposit-based returns.” Kwon Se-eun, CEO of Meaning Eco, the consulting firm overseeing Waterbomb’s sustainability efforts, said, “We’re also working to make the official water guns more durable so they can be reused.” She added, “We are considering various ways to make water guns reusable.”