Making K-pop Greener
The humungous popularity of K-Pop around the world has resulted in a massive increase in sales of physical copies of K-pop albums, even though the culture of buying CDs has been on the decline. The pandemic and post-pandemic era witnessed a record number of album sales- compared to the 25 million CDs sold in 2019, there has been an exponential growth in 2020 and 2021, with around 42 million and 60 million CDs sold respectively, according to Gaon Chart, a Korean album sales tracker.
While the industry is reaping immense profit, the environment is struggling with the plastic-wrapped, non-biodegradable albums. Unlike other music industries, K-pop fans buy the albums of their favorite artists in bulk, because they often contain various photocards for collectors and it would also increase their chances in being selected for a meet and greet with the artist. During the pandemic, the artist-fan interaction was entirely online, which prompted international fans to buy albums in bulk like their South Korean counterparts. As album sales are important for the determination of a song or album position in music charts, the companies and artists conveniently neglect the negative ecological impact. The extra albums bought are often discarded on roadsides.
This is when the Indonesian wing of the EXO-L, the fandom name of popular K-pop group EXO, led by Nurul Sarifah launched an online platform called Kpop4Planet, to discuss and raise awareness about this issue and help fans to be more mindful of the ecology and urge the various K-pop management companies to be more eco-friendly in their ventures. Various such campaigns urge the fans to donate the extra albums that they possess without throwing them away recklessly.
The fan initiatives that call for companies to go greener has been effective in making the K-pop industry rethink and certain big names in the industry such as JYP Entertainment, YG Entertainment and Big Hit Music have started to reduce the use of non-biodegradable plastics.
2021 saw artists such as singer Chung Ha, releasing her album Querencia in a plastic-free, eco-friendly packaging and also the album Take by singer Mino. Similarly, J-Hope, one of the members of global pop group BTS, had his 2022 solo album Jack in the Box come in recyclable packaging and without a physical CD but a QR code to access his music digitally. Popular girl group BlackPink released their new album Born Pink in 2022 which used soybean oil-ink as an alternative to synthetic color along with biodegradable packaging. The individual photo-folio released by BTS members also used soluble paper and eco-friendly ink.
A complete switch to greener and eco-friendly products will not happen overnight but the fact that entertainment giants are taking baby-steps towards the same and are willing to spend money on making sure that their products harm nature as little as possible is promising. This shows that fandoms with a vision can push corporates to focus on a sustainable development.
Author: Namitha Sam
