Recycling program in tokyo

Of the million tons of household refuge produced annually in Japan, about 80 million tons is dumped in landfills and million tons is burned in incinerators. Most people don't want incinerators placed near their homes out of concerns over dioxin and other harmful chemicals they produce. According to one study in Osaka, people living near incinerators were three times more likely to come down with serious illnesses compared to people living in other areas. In addition to that garbage fuel costs twice as much to make as simply incinerating it.

An issue that has become the focus of attention in Japan is disposal of industrial waste discharged by factories and businesses. The Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law of regulates the methods of disposal of certain wastes emitted by factories and businesses, such as soot, sludge, waste oil, and discarded plastic, plus other wastes. Industrial wastes in Japan amounted to The Waste Management and Public Cleansing Law, as revised in June , imposes stiff penalties on illegal waste disposal.

The number of cases of illegal dumping has been declining, but the occurrence of several large-volume cases in fiscal and prompted the Ministry of the Environment to increase the number of staff assigned to waste and recycling monitoring. The amount of general non-industrial waste generated in Japan has exceeded 50 million tons a year since This has increased the emphasis on recycling in Japan, which has one of the highest used paper recycling rates in the world. Garbage disposal sites are expected to reach their limit in a few years, and the burning of waste results in dioxin pollution, so recycling has become important as a solution for reducing the amount of trash.

The ratio of used paper collected in Japan in was The recycling rate is 99 percent for asphalt. The Japanese reuse over 50 percent of all household products, including 98 percent of their paper and 96 percent of their glass.

To achieve this Japanese citizens are very good about followed rules set up my municipal governments outlined on a color-coded calendars that most people keep in their kitchens. Large items such as bicycles or televisions can be collected by paying a fee to local government pick up services or giving them to people that cruise in small trucks, using a loudspeaker to tick off the items they collect. In most places cans, bottles and newspapers are each placed in separate containers and picked up twice a month.

Newspapers are also picked up by independent trash collectors who drive around in trucks and sometimes trade stacks of old newspaper for toilet paper. There are special collection days once a month for things like batteries, ceramics, old clothes, furniture, light bulbs, bicycles, televisions and other items. Supermarkets have receptacles for recycling milk cartons, plastic bottles, and Styrofoam trays.

In many places, trash has to be separated into burnable and nonburnable items. People that don't abide the rules have to deal with "trash lady," a local busy body who makes sure everyone toes the line. In some places, Japanese deposit their household trash and garbage in clear plastic bags with a tag with their name on it.

The purpose of this is to humiliate people who place recyclable cans, bottles or newspapers in clear bag, which everyone who passes by can see. Kyoto-based plasterer Hiroshi Murakami has developed a number of building materials made out of natural materials. Among these are earthquake-resistant wall panels made from pulped recycled paper, soil and lime-based hardener. Toyota and other automobile makers are designing cars that are made almost completely of recyclable materials and designing systems to remove and process these materials.

A law went into affect that requires car owners to pay a disposal fee when they get rid of their car and car makers are obliged to dispose of plastic, fabric waste, air bags, and CFCs from air conditioners.

Other materials are taken care of by the scarp metal dealers. The Fundamental Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society was enacted in to serve as the basis for a comprehensive and systematic approach to waste and recycling.

It was followed by a number of other new recycling laws covering specific areas such as home appliances, food waste, construction materials, automobiles, and personal computers. The implementation of the Receptacle Packaging Recycle Law in April placed the responsibility for recycling polyethylene terephthalate PET bottles, glass bottles, and paper and plastic packaging on the manufacturer. These receptacles comprise percent of the total weight of general waste matter discarded by households, but, because of their bulk, they occupy 60 percent of the total volume.

This law is based on dividing the cost of garbage disposal among companies, consumers, and municipalities, as compared to when disposal costs were formerly covered by taxes. When consumers discard a receptacle, they are required to presort it for the designated municipality pick-up areas, where it is collected for recycling by the manufacturers. Beginning in April , paper and plastic packaging will also be subject to recycling under this law.

Electrical products discarded by Japanese households are almost all disposed of in landfills. The Specific Household Electrical Appliance Recycling Law was enacted in in an effort to reduce the volume of such landfill disposal.

Japanese uses 30 billion plastic bags and collectively lose tens of thousands of plastic umbrellas every year.

There is a major push in Japan to get customers to reduce their use of plastics bags at stores and supermarkets. Some stores charge for plastic bags or give customers discounts if they bring their own bags. Others give out free reusable bags. Studies have shown that when customers are given bags for free nearly everybody takes them. When the bags the cost 4 cents only 30 percent take them. When they cost 8 cents only 8 percent take them. Japan is one of the first countries to get into recyclable and biodegradable plastics in a big way.

PET polyethylene terephthalate resin bottles are collected are turned into high-quality polyester or new bottles. Asahi Breweries has dressed some of its employees in uniforms made from recycled plastic bottles.

The price paid for used PET bottles rose 2. PET bottles are washed and crushed and sold to textile manufacturers. The recyclable resins they contain can be used in the production artificial fibers and plastic and demand for them has risen as the price of oil soared. Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo produces 90 tons of waste a day, the equivalent of a city with 90, people.

About 50 percent of the waste is in the form of paper, Styrofoam and cardboard boxes. These are placed in five-meter-high piles that are taken away to recycling centers in China who produce 50 millimeter granules that are sold to manufacturers of video tape, clothes hangers, combs, buckets and other objects. About 30 tons of tuna waste is created every day.

Most of it is collected by a livestock feed maker that boils the waste, presses it into solid and liquid materials and separates oil from liquid with a centrifuge. The oil is used in margarine, soap and cosmetics. The solid waste is made into feed for chickens and farmed fish such as yellowtail.

Seldom-used metal pedestrian bridges on Osaka have been disassembled and shipped to Indonesia. Even the Shinkansen trains are recycled. The trains are first dismantled by heavy machinery and welders It takes about one day to take a car apart.

The pieces are then shipped to a recycling contractors who sort out the pieces into aluminum, steel and non-iron metals. Any parts with value are sold. Others are crushed and sorted with machines. The reuse ratio for metal is 91 percent. In June , Aeon Co. The polyethylene is sourced from ethanol made from the waste liquid that is left over after extracting the sugar from sugarcane juice. The bags will be sold from all of their supermarket stores at a cost of five yen apiece.

Aeon has been selling in the neighborhood of million plastic bags a year to their shoppers. The Kobe-based company Kadokura has developed a technique for transforming felt from used clothes in a hard building material that can be sawed and hammered. Suntory Holdings Ltd. The system of recycling used PET bottles into brand new ones was made possible largely because the companies developed a method of removing impurities that become embedded on the inner surface of used plastic bottles but are too small to see with the naked eye.

Used PET bottles, collected mainly from households, are sorted in Kyoei's plant, where a total of 25 processes, including being crushed into small pieces and washed with alkaline fluids, remove impure substances from them. Additionally, Kyoei uses a machine that it bought from a European manufacturer and modified over a five-year period. The machine "creates a vacuum condition very close to that of the stratosphere.

The plant uses 50 percent of Kyoei's resin and 40 percent of other recycled materials to produce two-liter PET bottles for oolong tea. Suntory test-produced about 10 tons of plastic bottles to confirm the safety of the material. Munehiko Takada, chief of Suntory's division for the development of new packaging materials, said, Suntory "sets remarkably strict standards among beverage makers" over such points as whether the taste or fragrance of a drink remains unchanged, even after storage in bottles for several months at extremely high temperatures, and whether the bottles show cracks or dents.

Derived from petroleum, plastic is a compound made up of carbon and hydrogen in long molecular chains known as polymers. Heat can break those chains and dissolve the plastic into elementary gases. The process begins when bales of waste plastic are put through a crusher machine, which pulverizes them before another machine removes foreign objects such as metal, which is recycled. The plastic begins to resemble a gray, gooey pulp, which is poured into a forming machine that then shapes the pulp into cylinders called refuse plastic fuel.

The refuse plastic fuel is moved to a gasification plant where it enters two towering furnaces. In the first, a vortex of sand heated to between and degrees Celsius instantly turns the refuse plastic fuel into a gas, leaving any metallic materials to accumulate at the bottom of the furnace for recovery and recycling. Plastic bales are stacked at the Showa Denko Kawasaki plant. The gas is then shunted to an even hotter furnace silo where it swirls around while being oxidized at 1, degrees Celsius with the help of oxygen and steam.

This produces a synthesis gas made up in large part of hydrogen and carbon monoxide, while a quick cooling stage that chills the gas below degrees Celsius prevents dioxin resynthesis. The gas then undergoes several cleaning stages, removing hydrogen chloride and sulfur while converting the carbon monoxide into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Operating around the clock and known among industry otaku geeks for its nighttime lights, the plant has more than 1, workers and can process tons of waste plastic a day, producing tons of ammonia.

Showa Denko is the only company in the world with this ammonia production technology. PET bottles debuted in Japan in as soy sauce containers that were colored green and marketed as shatterproof, lightweight, disposable and more convenient than glass bottles. Later, the plastic was made transparent for easier recycling and PET bottles have since become the industry standard.

Opened in under major packaging and PET bottle maker Toyo Seikan, it makes 23, tons of polyester resin annually by processing 27, tons of used PET bottles, mostly from the Kanto region centering on Tokyo. Bales of PET bottles are stacked in a yard and graded according to how clean they are, and whether caps and labels have been removed; the residue liquids emit an almost palpable pong. The final step is called polymerization — that is, making new polymers, the long molecular chains of monomers, the building blocks that form plastics.

One challenge is the low price of PET flakes. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

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