2024
Beneath is a small team of students, volunteers, cafés and partners in Seoul, giving the city’s everyday waste a second life.
What we
throw away
comes back
2024
Seoul, South Korea
Beneath began in Seoul in 2024. Discarded materials do not disappear. The cost of handling them falls on the communities least responsible for producing them.
That is what we mean by climate inequality. So we started at the point of disposal, not the point of production.
Beneath, 2024
“What a neighbourhood throws away comes back to it.”
Collect, reclaim, innovate, distribute
That became the pipeline. We collect paper cartons and coffee grounds from cafés, work with recycling partners to have them reprocessed, and turn them into things people can use. Each step is recorded.
2024
Café by café
Every café on the route gets a collection bag. One counter turned into two, and then into 23.
March 2026
Two routes, every week
In March 2026 we began recruiting volunteers for regular routes through Chungpa-dong and Yeonhui-dong. The routes are now open to anyone who wants to walk them.
Today
Following the carton
We placed trackers on 53 milk cartons across Seoul cafés, to see where a carton really goes once it leaves the counter.
Today
7,341
Cartons collected
Counted at the site they came from, with 17 partner organisations and 23 cafés on the route.
Today
Back to the neighbourhood
152 rolls of recycled tissue have gone back to households in the district the cartons came from, and 13 trees have been spared along the way.
Next
This cycle is for anyone to join