Disused Home Appliances Door-to-door Pick-up Service

Abstract

The Disused Home Appliances Door-to-door Pick-up Service (the pick-up service) is a large home appliances (TVs, refrigerators, washing machines) pick-up and removal service provided by local governments for free of charge. One can make a free pick-up request either online or by phone, and dedicated pick-up and removal team from the local government in charge will visit the requested household to pick-up and remove the disused appliance free of charge. Seoul Metropolitan Government initially started the pick-up service in June 2012 as a pilot. Then it expanded in scope to include 5 other metropolitan cities and provinces in May 2013. Some 162,000 appliances in total have been removed and recycled by the end of 2013, which is equivalent to savings in pick-up and removal fees worth 2.1 billion KRW. The Korea Association of Electronics Environment (KAEE) conducted a telephone poll among the pick-up service users during the period between January and December last year (2013), which indicated a highly positive response with 99.6% (8,566 out of 8,601) of all users expressing their satisfaction with the service. Accordingly, the number of pick-up requests soared by 50 to 60% in 2013 when compared with the 2012 figures. The success of the pick-up service will also contribute to achieving the nationwide recycling target. In addition to the 6 cities and provinces already participating in the project, Chungcheongnam-do, Jeollanam-do, Gyeongsangnam-do, Jeju-do, and Sejong City launched their pick-up services as of April 2014, followed by the rest of Ulsan City in June, and Gangwon-do, Chungcheongbuk-do, Jeollabuk-do, and Gyeongsangbuk-do in July, to raise the number of participating cities and provinces to 16 as of late July 2014.