We lived in South Korea in 2007. I really noticed the initiatives taken by the government to reduce waste - it was so much more efficient that our government initiatives! I'm not sure if it was local, or nationwide, but there were some amazing things. The most effective thing I noticed was:
The garage in the building where we lived was where the garbage and recycling were done. Residents separated paper, plastics, glass, styrofoam, food waste and textiles into appropriate bins. We had to buy "garbage bags" from local stores which were very expensive. Only true garbage went into them (ie - anything that didn't get recycled). An attendant (who doubled as the parking attendant) went through your garbage to ensure that recyclables were not included. It took us a while to get the hang of this - we didn't speak Hangul and didn't understand what the attendant was yelling at us in the beginning. It really was very effective - a small bag, about half the size of a shopping bag for garbage would take more than a month to fill. Since food waste was composted, we really ended up with very, very little. Really, mostly dental floss, and tissues, iirc.
It is amazing what can happen when a government is truly behind an environmental initiative, rather than just paying lip service to it.