TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/010289/01028900.034

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 3KB | 47 lines

PLANET OF THE YEAR, Page 47

The Good News: Japan Gives Trash a Second Chance


    With a barely audible whoosh, the large doors at the entrance
open to a spacious glass-walled hall filled with lush green plants
and the soothing sound of a trickling miniature waterfall. But the
sleek municipal building in Machida, a bustling city in central
Japan, is not a pristine botanical garden. The enticing entrance
is merely the facade of a $65 million facility built to handle a
dirty job: recycling the wastes of the city's 340,000 residents.
"We collect roughly 100,000 tons of garbage a year and convert it
back into valuable materials," says a smiling Kenichi Usui, a city
waste-management official. He has good reason to be boastful.
Japan, which is fast becoming the world's premier industrial power,
is also in the forefront of effective waste management.

    The country has made "waste not, want not" a national policy.
Last year 50% of Japan's wastepaper, 55% of its glass bottles and
66% of its beverage and food cans were recycled. Much of the
remaining trash was turned into fertilizers, fuel gases and
recycled metals.

    Behind the success are Japan's recycling technology and
systematic garbage collection. The Machida plant can deal with
almost any category of recyclable refuse: burnables, nonburnables,
bottles, cans, durables such as furniture and refrigerators, and
"harmfuls" like batteries. Depending on their category, the
castoffs are filtered, burned, crushed or otherwise treated on
their way to becoming reusable materials. Steel scrap is separated
from other garbage by huge magnets. Much of the recycling is
computer-controlled: only 45 people work in shifts to run the
round-the-clock operation.

    Prudent waste management would not be possible without the
disciplined cooperation of the Japanese people. Before putting out
their garbage, they religiously follow such requirements as
separating bottles from cans and burnables like paper from
nonburnables such as glass and hard plastic. People who want quick
disposal of old refrigerators or TV sets need only make a phone
call to the sanitation department for a special pickup. Observes
Yumimaru Nakada, a senior official in Tokyo's public sanitation
bureau: "Living in a crowded situation, the Japanese have come to
learn that garbage recycling is no laughing matter."

    And it certainly pays to recycle. From 100,000 tons of typical
Japanese garbage comes enough wood pulp to make a roll of toilet
paper that would wrap around the earth ten times.