From this month on, what you don’t eat, you pay for.

Municipalities started to charge residents based on the volume or weight of their food trash as of Sunday as part of efforts to reduce processing costs and save energy.

Of 144 local district offices, 129 are the first to introduce various methods to charge for food waste.

They include having residents pre-pay for waste management by purchasing standard plastic bags, tags and stickers.

The pay-as-you-throw rule also includes a weight-based system under which residents are billed for the weight of their food waste. For this, a district office is required to install a computerized scale inside the public trashcan to weigh the waste. The equipment can also read radio-frequency identification tags that carry residents’ information to bill them.

The Environment Ministry hopes that the new rule will lower annual waste management costs by 20 percent, or 160 billion won. The amount of food waste is expected to be reduced by about 20 percent, it added.

The new rule, however, is likely to cause inconvenience and confusion to residents as they are bombarded with different disposal methods according to their house type or neighborhood. Apartment complexes are required to use either the weight-based system or a cost-sharing system, in which every household pays an equally divided service fee. Detached houses are recommended to purchase stickers or food waste bags.

Many complain that they were not given sufficient information on the new rules in advance and were deprived of choice. Some methods such as the cost-sharing system are not perceived as fair because every household disposes of a different amount of food but is charged the same amount.

Concerns are also being raised over the additional maintenance costs imposed on municipalities if they install special devices for the weight-based system. There are also fears that some people may illegally throw food waste in with other residential waste to save money.

By Cho Chung-un (christory@heraldcorp.com)