Q: How often do you recycle? What is your incentive for recycling?
A: I recycle water bottles about once a week. My incentive for recycling is that it’s for a good cause. I recycle at my church and they use the money from the recycled water bottles to help the homeless people in Santa Ana.
Q: What kind of incentive do you think would cause others to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle more?
A: I think having cheaper prices for recycled products when re-buying them or getting paid to reduce, reuse and recycle would be an incentive that would cause others to do these things more.
Q: Do you feel that composting is a good way to treat organic waste? Why?
A: Yes, because by composting, we wouldn’t need to use chemical fertilizers. Chemicals contaminate the soil and reduce the quality of the soil which in turn goes into the food that we eat.
Q: When you lived in Korea when you were young, were there efforts to reduce reuse and recycle?
A: Not recycling, but reducing and reusing definitely. When I was young, Korea was going through many financial struggles; because of that we had to reduce and reuse as much as possible. With clothes, the younger siblings would have to wear the hand-me-downs or fix up old clothing by re-sewing them.
Q: Other than water bottles what else do you recycle?
A: I own a contractor’s service company and we use paint every day. The paint that is left over, we usually leave for later usage or take to a paint recycling center where the paint is burnt and the paint can is cleaned and reused to store more paint.
Q: When you were younger, was waste generation still a problem?
A: Yes, when I was young, nobody really knew much about disposing waste so they used to throw trash into the rivers or bury them into the ground or put them on mountains. This was a huge problem because there was a bad odor in many places and there were many diseases going around.
Q: How do you reduce products inside your home?
A: Well, sometimes I make printing errors when I’m printing invoices out. I simply reuse the paper by putting it back into the printer and using the other side that I didn’t print on yet. Also, I try to take a grocery bag with me to the grocery store so I don’t create more waste by using the plastic bags from the stores.
Q: Do you believe that your reducing, reusing and recycling has an effect on the total waste generation?
A: Yes, of course. I believe that if everyone puts in a little bit of effort, that we can change the world. If I believe that what I am doing to save the environment is having no effect at all, then I would stop reducing, reusing, and recycling. I believe that the little things add up and that if I keep doing what I’m doing and others that think the same way I do as well, eventually the waste generation will decrease.
Q: From the three Rs (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle), which do you think is the most beneficial in preventing waste generation?
A: Reuse and reduce because by reusing a product, it does not become a disposed waste for a while and reducing can help by using less of the product so less of it will be disposed of. Also, we can reduce by using things that are reusable such as a mug instead of drinking out of water bottles all the time.
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Interview with Steve Park