“Recycling instructions are included in the barcodes that are attached to plastic containers.”

SKC ESG BM Promotion Team of Seong-min Kim, Hee-won Song and Chan-shik Lee

Eco-friendly plastic platform

My Green Place Management Team

Guidelines for complicated plastic sorting

Using barcode reader for easy recycling

SKC ESG BM Promotion Team Leader Seong-min Kim (in the center) is running My Green Place app

with Manager Chan-shik Lee (on the left) and Manager Hee-won Song (on the right). / Image from SKC

"I looked at PET drink bottles and thought hard for a long while. Then, I realized that all bottles had in common a barcode. I was like, this is it!”

Seong-min Kim is the Team Leader of SKC ESG (Environment, Society, Governance) BM Promotion Team and in charge of the eco-friendly plastic platform My Green Place, and this is how his team developed the first app to adopt the plastic barcode reader among other petrochemical companies. The idea that came from Manager Hee-won Song, in the same team, was conceived _ base_d on the QR code that has become familiar to people nationwide.

It took two full years for Team Leader Seong-min Lim, Manager Hee-won Song and Manager Chan-shik Lee in the SKC ESG BM Promotion Team to officially launch My Green Place.

Although they did not write the codes themselves, they participated in the entire development process from the concept phase, through development to marketing. They recruited 1,000 eco-moms (housewives who practice environment protection in their daily life) and MZ generation volunteers early last year for the pilot testing. The reaction was hot.

Of course, there was trial and error at first. Kim said, “Actually, in the beginning, we wanted to move to a _ meta_verse concept, but we soon judged that it would be pushing ourselves too far to go for _ meta_verse due to limited development costs and environment.”

Instead, a game concept was taken. Lee said, “Well, recycling has almost no fun element. When we first developed the app, we really thought a lot about fun elements.” When a user opens the app and simply enter his/her username, My World is displayed. Here, the user can use the barcode reader at the bottom to get details of each plastic such as components and recycling instructions.

Such activities will generate points and the user can plant trees, grass, etc. and raise fairies of light, earth, water and happiness. The team plans to expand this world view later into the universe and deep sea.

However, fun is not the only thing they sought. They received guidelines from the Ministry of Environment to ensure accuracy and expertise of the information and also had the information reviewed by the Korea Waste Association and professors in the relevant field.

BM Promotion Team’s further goal is to increase consumer participation. For this, they are working to add elements such as challenges that will encourage consumer participation.

Kim said, "Consumers can report information about plastics not available in the app, so it will further be improved as the reports are added and data is accumulated,” and continued to say, “More and more people around me are already telling me that they will use the app to teach their children.”

Reporter: Joon-ho Gwon

https://www.fnnews.com/news/202205011858253406