'Gunpo-Gwangmyeong Incinerator Cooperation' Wins Grand Prize at Gyeonggi Province's 'Proactive Administration Best Practices Contest'
Gyeonggi Province announced on the 12th that the ‘Gwangmyeong-Gunpo Public Incinerator Cooperative Incineration Agreement’ promoted by Gwangmyeong City and Gunpo City was selected for the Grand Prize at the ‘2026 Proactive Administration Best Practices Contest’ held on the afternoon of the 11th at the Gyeonggi Arts Center.
Gyeonggi Province conducted an open call targeting its 31 cities and counties and 187 public institutions, and from the 58 submissions received (25 from cities and counties, 33 from public institutions), 18 cases (8 from cities and counties, 10 from public institutions) were selected through preliminary screening. Based on these, the final outstanding institutions were selected by combining the results of a citizen opinion poll and the finals evaluation. This time, the province expanded the citizen opinion poll score from 10 points to 20 points, striving to discover cases with a high level of citizen-perceived impact.
According to the finals evaluation: △the Grand Prize went to Gwangmyeong and Gunpo cities for the “Gunpo-Gwangmyeong Public Incinerator Cooperative Incineration Agreement”; △the Best City/County award went to Suwon City for ‘A national first! Postal Auto-Linked ‘Integrated, Customized Electronic Notification’’; and the Best Public Institution awards went to the Yongin City Volunteer Center for ‘Establishment of the Ready-Yong Disaster Response Platform’ and to Yeoju Urban Corporation for ‘Establishment of a System Guaranteeing Customized Mobility Rights for Pregnant Women’.
In addition, △the Excellence award went to Namyangju City, Icheon City, Seongnam Urban Development Corporation, Goyang Industrial Promotion Agency, Uijeongbu Urban Corporation, and Yeoncheon County Facilities Management Corporation; △the Encouragement award went to Goyang City, Hwaseong City, Yeoju City, Yangju City, Gyeonggi Tourism Organization, Gyeonggi Housing & Urban Development Corporation, Pocheon Urban Corporation, and Yangju Urban Corporation, respectively.
Gwangmyeong and Gunpo cities, which won the Grand Prize in the combined city/county and public institution category, established the nation's first inter-local government ‘one-to-one mutual cross-incineration’ network as concerns grew over disruptions in waste processing and increased private consignment costs due to the ban on direct landfilling of household waste in the Seoul metropolitan area and the regular maintenance of incinerators.
By sharing spare capacity at incineration facilities and adjusting regular maintenance schedules to differ from one another, they created a mutual backup operation system in which one incinerator can be used when the other is shut down. This preemptively prevented a waste crisis and saved 330 million won in public budget that would have been spent on private consignment.
The 18 cities, counties, and public institutions selected in this contest will be awarded certificates from the governor, and these cases will be shared with other local governments and central government ministries through card news and social networking services (SNS), and publicized to residents.
In addition, the award-winning cases from this contest have been granted qualification to compete in the ‘2026 National Proactive Administration Best Practices Contest’ jointly organized by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Personnel Management, and the Office for Government Policy Coordination, where they will compete against outstanding cases from institutions nationwide.
Ju Hyeong-cheol, Vice Governor for Economic Affairs, said, “To effectively respond to a rapidly changing society, proactive administration based on creativity and expertise, breaking away from existing practices, is needed,” adding, “We will continue to provide unstinting support so that frontline public officials and institutions can carry out creative and proactive administration.”