On the 4th, about 2.5t of large sacks stuffed with compressed waste banners had piled up at the dedicated waste-banner collection site inside the Jungnang Water Reclamation Center in Yongdap-dong, Seongdong-gu, Seoul. Most of the waste banners stacked there that day were expired real-estate ads such as ‘First-come, first-served sale of remaining units’. A center official said, “After the election, banners that have outlived their use will be brought here.”

Candidate and party banners that hung across the streets turn into waste once the election ends. Many are still incinerated, but efforts to recycle waste banners are steadily expanding.

According to the National Election Commission on the 8th, it issued 101,813 banner labels (stickers) for the 2022 local elections. That means more than 100,000 candidate banners were hung nationwide during that period. Including voter-mobilization banners by parties, the volume of waste banners grows even further. Banners celebrating victory or acknowledging defeat also soon become trash.

According to tallies by the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment, during the 2022 local election period (MayJuly), local governments collected about 15,574,000t of waste banners nationwide. The recycling rate was only 24.8%. As more regions held by-elections this year than four years ago, waste banners are expected to increase further.

In principle, parties or candidates are to remove election banners without delay after election day. In practice, however, most are collected by local governments. The government also instructs that banners taken down by candidates be sent to local governments for recycling. But there is a shortage of storage space for the flood of incoming waste banners, and finding recyclers is not easy.

In May last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Government created the first dedicated collection site for waste banners in the country. The goal is to pool waste banners collected by districts to reduce processing costs and raise the recycling rate.

Until now, waste banners have mainly been recycled into eco-bags, shopping bags, or solid recovered fuel (SRF). As technology advances, production of nonwoven fabric for agriculture and civil engineering is also increasing. Cho Myung-Hwan, team leader for recycling planning in the Seoul Resource Circulation Division, said, “This year, we plan to process half of the collected volume into nonwoven fabric and the other half through chemical recycling to make components for electronic products and more.”

Thanks to these efforts, the recycling rate for waste banners has steadily risen. The waste-banner recycling rate in Seoul, 42.2% in 2024, climbed to 85.7% last year. Nationwide, the recycling rate also rose from 33.3% in 2024 to 48.4% last year.

Plans to turn waste banners back into ‘new banners’ are also being actively pursued. An official at the climate ministry said, “Next year, we plan to work with some local governments on a circular project to turn waste banners into yarn and remake them into banners.” In this process, inkthe biggest obstacle to banner recyclingis removed using washing technology with special solvents.

While developing diverse recycling methods is important, some argue that banner use itself must be reduced. The Narasalim Research Institute suggested, “We should not only expand recycling of waste banners but also take an approach that reduces the social costs incurred at the production stage,” and proposed, “A policy shift is needed to reduce banner production, led by political parties and public institutions.”