K-pop fans line up at large bookstores early in the morning to buy albums when their favorite K-pop artists release a new album. They want a ‘photo card,’ not the album itself. A ‘photo card’ is a card with pictures of the artists, and fans buy dozens or hundreds of the same albums to get them. If they buy just one album, the probability of getting the desired photo card is very low, so fans have no choice but to purchase the album until they find one with the photo card they want. What will happen to the albums bought like this? They are thrown into the trash. K-pop artists’ albums are difficult to recycle because they consist of paper packing, plastic CD’s, and various other materials mixed together. However, the entertainment industry puts that fact aside and uses various tactics to increase revenue from album sales.

‘K-POP 4 PLANET’ is an organization that aims to create a healthy K-pop culture that does away with these practices. They campaigned to demand that entertainment companies come up with solutions to unnecessarily high-volume album sales. The campaign’s slogan is, “No K-pop on a dead planet.” During March this year, they received 8,000 albums that were difficult to dispose of from K-pop fans and sent them back to the entertainment companies. The organization emphasized the irresponsibility of companies who create a system in which consumers have no choice but to buy a lot of albums and where the environmental responsibility is left to consumers.

However, there are also positive examples of physical album composition. For example, Song Min-ho, a member of the group Winner, produced physical copies of his third full-length album, “To Infinity,” consisting of low-carbon paper and biodegradable plastic. New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde chose to replace the CD with a download card when making an album. In addition, there is one band that has really shown how their actions will affect the environment, which is Coldplay. They temporarily suspended their world tour in 2019, revealing that they generated a huge amount of carbon and trash when they conducted the world tour. Since then, they have used recycled aviation fuel on their airplanes. Furthermore, their world tour was organized using eco-friendly materials and ways to maximize energy efficiency when performing their concert set. All of these artists have made efforts toward sustainable energy use and used their influence to help protect the environment.