What’s up with recycling in Japan? My most rubbish blog to date!
Before arriving my understanding of recycling in Japan was it was complicated, insane and if you messed up a swarm of mukade would be sent to your house. Forcing you to be a better person or accept your fate as the ruler of a newly formed mukade republic! Okay, maybe not quite like this, but I knew Japan was heavy on recycling, perhaps More so than the UK. But is this the case, is Japan more recycle focused than the UK, and what is the process in Japan? Let's take a deep dive into this topic, and hopefully my blog won't feel like a recycled … version of another entry!
First, I will briefly explain the recycling process back in my hometown. We had a green bin for recycling; this is anything with a recycling symbol printed on it. This is mainly found on plastic packaging, cardboard, paper, and bottles. There is a food waste bin, my least favorite as this would smell the most and was notably worse if the UK experienced any hot weather. There is also a bin for garden waste, many homes in the UK have front and back gardens. Those with a green thumb can get rid of waste easily, anything bigger would need to be taken to the tidy tip/dump.
The tidy tip or local dump is a public resource you can use to remove larger items. This includes items such as bikes, bed frames, larger garden waste, anything if you can bring it via a car. My local tidy tip is free as it is paid for via tax, but you must visit during opening times. During COVID-19 time slot bookings were required. You can also hire people to remove waste for a cost. Lastly, we have the black bin, this is for everything else the non-recyclable parts, fabrics, glass, and tins.
This is my hometown’s recycling in a nutshell, this can vary county to county, but it is generally similar. Bins are collected periodically and in general if you do not mess up too much, slip ups can be forgiven or are corrected at the sorting plants. However, the bin men can opt to leave your rubbish if something is very wrong. For example, chucking, non-recycling into recycling or overfilling the bin or including oversized items etc. Recycling in the UK is considered a norm, it's not perfect and has room for improvement, but it is reported that about 90 percent of people in the UK recycle. The biggest offender being people putting recyclable things in the black bin, meaning items that can be recycled end up in landfills.
The first biggest difference in Japan is unlike the UK where there are small variations county to county. In Japan not only is every prefecture wildly different, towns and even sections of the same city within a prefecture can vary wildly. My experience comes from Saga prefecture as well as what a few fellow ALTS have told me from neighboring prefectures within Kyushu. So, my experience will not reflect or be accurate to other parts of Japan.
In my city in Japan there are four colored bags for rubbish, these are put out at a designated location on certain days. Bins in the UK are typically placed in front of houses. Most people in Japan live in apartments, so this system makes sense, those in houses in my city also place their bags at this designated spot. I've heard from a fellow ALT that in their prefecture, bags are placed in front of homes. However, I think in my city it is more logical to have all the bags in one spot for the collectors instead of them making several stops along a road. My city also has crow issues and designated spots have anti crow measures. I can imagine leaving bags in front of houses would result in mess everywhere and birds uprising to take control of us non-flying mortals.
As with the UK, there are local dumps outside the city that require a car to get to, visits must be booked ahead. These are the places to take larger items so they can be dismantled into parts and recycled or disposed of correctly. This costs a fee. There is also the sticker system which also costs a fee and requires a booked pick-up time. This is how those without cars remove medium-sized items such as microwaves or old bulky futons. And just like the UK people can be hired to remove larger heavier items for a price which will need to be scheduled when someone Is at home.
The first bag in my home is orange, this is for plastic bottles, but any plastic item with the symbol can also be placed here. The next is black which is for glass, tins, and batteries. The green bag is for non-burnable plastics, fabric items and even shoes, and the pink bag is essentially the UK black bin combined with the food bin. Fun aside, this is how things used to be before the brown bin was introduced. The pink bag is for everything else, including food waste. These four bags are collected on scheduled days; in my section of the city, it is not required to place your name and details on each bag. But I am aware in certain places such as areas of Tokyo and some towns in my prefecture your details are required, and bags can be returned if they are not happy with them.
Japan uses the concept of the four R’s refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle, believing change comes from the source, the person. This is also something I have seen reflected in the classroom in many of my students’ essays. Recently, this topic came up, students answered how they could do their part in reducing plastic waste. Many answers reflected the four R concept. If a person brings their own chopsticks, uses a metal straw or brings their own water bottle they can reduce the need for the plastic throw away versions. It is important to note that in the UK, the sale of plastic straws became outlawed, hence the soggy paper straw memes. Both Japan and the UK charge a fee for the sale of plastic bags.
So why are there differences? This mainly comes down to how waste is dealt with. In Japan the primary method is incineration with a focus on energy recovery which is used as heating or electricity, note my use of burnable waste and non-burnable. In the UK, the method is more mechanical and even involves biological treatment of some waste. Much of the UKs rubbish still ends up in landfill something it is working towards reducing. Japan’s system requires a more rigorous sorting and collection procedure at household level, whilst in the UK we noted many people still find it easier to throw everything into the black bin without consequence. It is also possible that most people do not realize some items can be recycled and throw them in the black bin to be safe as the bin will still be collected. Most cases of bins being left are non-recyclable things in the recycling bin. So often the green bin is left but the same is not true vice versa.
The UK system primarily focuses on collecting and recycling processing materials like plastics, glass, metals, and paper. However, isolated projects like Zero waste Leeds is an example of the UK leading in the recycling field. This project, however, is not reflective of the country. The site world population review has this year's ranking of countries by waste recovery and leading the way is Switzerland, Japan placing 12th and the UK 14th. Two very good results writing this entry made me appreciate both systems Japan may be vigorous, and recycling may scare those new to living in the country, but the results speak volumes. The UK pledge to divert waste from landfills has seen its numbers improve recently, and I only hope those numbers continue to improve.
