Five Private Funeral Homes in Incheon Join 'No Disposable Items' Initiative

Funeral Hall Reusable Containers
Photo by Incheon City

[Asia Economy Reporter Park Hyesook] Incheon City is expanding the operation of a disposable-free funeral culture to private funeral homes.

On the 1st, the city announced that it has signed a "Disposable-Free Funeral Culture Creation Agreement" with five private funeral homes in the region.

The participating funeral homes are the Workers' Welfare Corporation Incheon Hospital Funeral Home (Bupyeong-gu), Namdong Sky Funeral Culture Center (Namdong-gu), Saecheonnyun Funeral Home (Gyeyang-gu), Onnuri General Hospital Funeral Home (Seo-gu), and Yeji Funeral Home (Jung-gu).

The city will support these funeral homes with washing, delivery, and collection services for reusable tableware sets, while awarding them a "Eco-friendly Resource Circulation Funeral Home" plaque and promoting them through their official website and social networking services (SNS).

Previously, all university hospital funeral homes in Incheon, including Inha University Hospital, Gil Hospital, Incheon St. Mary's Hospital, and International St. Mary's Hospital, have been operating eco-friendly funeral homes without disposable products since December last year.

Additionally, Incheon Medical Center was the first to stop using disposable products in May last year, achieving a reduction of 160,000 disposable items over about six months.

Funeral homes, a representative industry with high disposable product usage, are estimated to discard more than 10 tons of disposable waste annually per location due to the convenience of using and discarding disposable items.

Companies provide disposable products with their logos to employees attending funerals, and the use of disposable products is a mandatory item in funeral service contracts, making disposable product use common in funeral homes.

An Incheon City official stated, "This year, we plan to expand eco-friendly funeral homes without disposable products to all private funeral homes. Furthermore, we will continuously promote various policies to reduce disposable product use in daily life, such as establishing a reusable cup sharing system and revitalizing zero-waste markets."