Comprehensive Mobile Application for Incentive-based
Garbage Cleaning (“Time to Bin”) - Cheongju City

No More Regulations!
Encouraging Voluntary Citizen Participation through Fun and Rewards

Most people are aware of the seriousness of environmental degradation. In a recent survey of citizens in Cheongju, 95.1% of respondents answered that environmental pollution posed grave concerns. The problem, however, is that this level of awareness does not necessarily lead to meaningful actions for environmental protection. Moreover, the volume of waste such as disposable food containers, plastic, foam resin and PVC products, has increased markedly due to the surge in use of online food delivery services since the COVID-19 outbreak. In line with this, the Cheongju City, recognizing the distinct limitations of its existing regulation-oriented environmental policies such as crackdowns on illegal waste dumping and impositions of fines, has begun seeking new policies designed to attract voluntary citizen participation.

The development of its comprehensive reward-based waste cleaning application (“Time to Bin”) is one outcome of Cheongju City’s efforts to attract such citizen participation. This app is a public version of “Cashslide,” the most popular commercial reward app with 25 million subscribers. In detail, the app provides necessary cleaning-related information, on garbage collection hours and guidelines for waste disposal for example, in a fun and easy to understand way, and offers diverse incentives to encourage citizens to take more voluntary actions, including community currency payments and giveaways, as a reward for engaging in environment-friendly behaviors designated in the app such as using tumblers and reusable containers or learning of facts related to the environment. The Cheongju City has adopted a vision of reducing its annual volume of domestic waste by 3%, through encouraging 400,000 residents (almost half of its total population of 860,000) to subscribe to this app.

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[Source] Ministry of the Interior and Safety