Seoul City has decided to build a new incineration plant at a site already housing a similar facility in the western district of Mapo.
 
The city government announced the plan in a press briefing on Wednesday, saying the site in Sangam-dong received excellent reviews in a five-point evaluation, including location, environment and economic feasibility.
 
At present, four incineration plants operating in Seoul burn about 22-hundred tons of waste a day. The city has been looking for a site to build a new incinerator capable of handling one-thousand tons of waste per day, which is currently being buried in a landfill in Incheon.
 
Burying municipal waste in landfills in the capital region will be banned from 2026, increasing the urgency for Seoul to construct a new incinerator.
 
A special committee to choose an appropriate site within the city had reviewed some 60-thousand potential areas and selected 36 candidate sites. 
 
The city plans to demolish the existing facility by 2035 before constructing a new incinerator. The entire incinerator will be built underground, while a public park and other facilities will be constructed above it.
 
It will also build leisure facilities and a large monument in the area to turn the site into a city landmark, after studying overseas cases such as the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, Denmark.
 
The plan is drawing strong backlash from Mapo District, though. It demands the city scrap the plan, which it claims ignored the opinions of local residents.