It’s All Gone, the Mystery of the Umbrella Plastic Cover

     On rainy days when you walk around public places, there were always a plastic covers for umbrellas. However, all of a sudden, it is gone. Especially, when you enter a subway, you know that it is missing. ST talks about the disappearance of umbrella plastic covers.Ed

     On a rainy day, many public places had adopted using umbrella plastic covers for wet umbrellas to maintain the clean city culture. However, umbrella plastic covers that used to be commonly found in bus and train stations were gone. Did you know why umbrella plastic covers suddenly disappeared? ST attempts to uncover the mystery of umbrella plastic covers by talking about the umbrellaplastic cover policy!

     On rainy days, most public places have umbrella plastic covers at main entrances. This was a welfare system to prevent slippingaccidents that can be caused by drops of rainwater from wet umbrellas. However, on May 1, 2018, the Seoul metropolitan government announced that they would stop providing umbrella plastic covers in subway stations and public buildings. Why didSeoul decide to take such action?

     Plastic covers for umbrellas are not recyclable, thus causing enormous, negative environmental effects. Each year, we use 200 million umbrella plastic covers. As environmental issues involving waste plastic have become hot topics recently, more attention is being paid to the use of plastic bags. Due to rainwater, the umbrella plastic cover stays wet, making it impossible to recycle.Therefore, all of them are just buried or incinerated, causing large-scale waste problems and environmental pollution. Meanwhile,the result of the survey on umbrella plastic cover usage showed that 60% of respondents used umbrella plastic covers, while 40% answered that they could live without using them.

     For these reasons, the metropolitan government of Seoul decided to stop using umbrella plastic covers. Instead, the city offered several alternatives. A typical example is an umbrella rainwater remover. The principle of the remover is very simple. By passing the umbrella through a gap within the remover, a brush in it will wipe out the rainwater. Furthermore, a rainwater carpet that absorbs rainwater complements the remover. The two above- mentioned methods do not create plastic waste, and do not leak rainwater. The metropolitan government of Seoul will expand the implementation of the said methods continuously.

     With the new system in place, we need to pay more attentionto such policies. The umbrella plastic cover is gone, andis replaced by the umbrella rainwater remover. With your cooperation, let’s make a cleaner and safer Korea!