SPECIAL

What Could Fiji Learn from Japan’s

RECYCLING HYPE
Story and Photos by Rachna NathWhen you think of waste management, what springs tomind? Large rubbish trucks carting garbage for disposal?
Perhaps recycling of kitchen refuse or maybe images of huge
waste treatment plants and landfills brimming with all kindsof gross trash. Whatever your idea of waste management,
chances are it’s not the elaborate and effective model theJapanese have devised.
In Japan, waste management is really a way of life. It’s notabout just discarding rubbish into recycle bins but a lifestyleof reducing, reusing and recycling just about anything. The
concept of ‘zero-waste’ lies at the heart of this notion ofwaste management.
All it takes is a stroll in Tokyo to realise there aren’t manyrubbish bins along the streets. You’d be forgiven for thinking
that trash there simply doesn’t exist, given the impeccably
clean roadsides. It all seems very futuristic.
When you do sight a trash can, it’s not just one but several,leaving you to figure out just which bin your litter goes into.
Japan is kept immaculately clean and its people super keen
on recycling. Everyone, from the youngest to the mostelderly have bought into the system.
It doesn’t just happen, it’s a community effort that starts
in the household. Every home is literally responsible for
their household garbage – and it can become a complicatedprocess. Every piece of litter has to be sorted and basicallycleaned and householders must make sure they take out thecorrect rubbish on the day.
One of Japan’s leading municipalities has refined theprocess to become a shining example of an effective zerowaste model. Residents at the Kawasaki City are tasked withmeticulously sorting their rubbish every day. Mondays are forglass bottles and cans, Wednesday and Saturdays for kitchen
waste, Tuesdays for plastic and Fridays for paper waste.

Once sorted, residents are expected to put the rubbish in
specific transparent bags and take them to rubbish collection
points around their neighbourhood.
These garbage bag sites have no foul smell because therubbish is taken out on the in the morning of collection andcleared by the municipality within a few hours.
Doing these rubbish tasks may seem inconvenient andcomplicated, but it’s not impossible.
The attitude to support the system is instilled from a very
young age. Children are taught the importance of proper
waste disposal, a bottom up approach that is largely why
Japan’s impressive waste management system works.
Literally everything collected by the municipality is recycled
in a system that involves the private sector.
At a collection facility the municipality again hand sorts
the rubbish into plastics and paper, bails it up and sends it
to a recycling factory. Mr Yasuyuki Ito, the municipality’s
recycling chief said that in the 1990s, Kawasaki City recognised there would be no
space for any more landfill in the near future.
“That gave a strong sense of crisis to the citizens so at thattime so the city promoted the awareness of the importanceof recycling, especially amongst young ones in elementaryschool.”
It wasn’t just Kawasaki City that had to deal with thiscrisis. All of Japan actually had to deal with this dilemma firstbrought to light in the early 1960s. If mass production andconsumption continued in an upward trend, Japan would
literally have a tonne-load of problems on their hands. Policy
makers had to find a feasible solution for its garbage or sinkunder its weight.
According to statistics by Waste Atlas, a single Japaneseperson produces an ‘average of 356.2kg of waste per year.

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As a country, all of Japan generates 45,360,000 tons ofmunicipal waste per year’, ranking it 8th in the world.
Because there wasn’t space to bury it all, Japan came up
with the solution of “waste to energy” disposal, a form ofenergy recovery where electricity or heat is generated fromthe primary treatment of waste.
Enter the private sector. Companies such as JFE Plastic
Resource Corporation, a leading eco-friendly company basedin Kawasaki city, are among the many that have joined thewaste management movement to take recycling to a whole
new level.
The Japanese government enticed local businesses with 1billion yen (just over 18 million Fijian dollars) to invest in theKawasaki municipality’s recycling model.
Today, JFE annually processes 40,000 tonnes of waste
plastic gathered from Kawasaki and neighbouring areas.
The model works for Japan because businesses arecharged a fee for recycling by the Japan Containers andPackaging Recycling Association, which in turn is paid torecycling companies such as JFE to improve recycling andremanufacturing.
Mr Katsunoru Suzuki, the Director and General Manager
Keihin Operations at JFE said what the company essentiallydoes
is recycle combustible waste, turning paper waste into
products such as toilet paper and recycled paper and plastics
into pipes and tubes. What cannot be recycled is incinerated
and the energy produced is converted into electricity for thegrid.
What can Fiji learn from the Japanese model for starters isto seriously embrace the concept ofreduce, reuse and recycle. How many of us are truly

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recycling? Composting? Reducing our waste? Or simply
refusing to use plastic bags?
Last year, the Fijian government placed a 6% Environmental
Levy and recently further introduced a 10 cent levy for theuse of plastic bags in a bid to reduce waste disposal.
While these initiatives are a definite start, community
based recycling with everyone involved as they are in Japan
would be more effective. Everyone would be responsible
for sorting their trash and it would not have to be carted toa landfill. Our recycled rubbish and energy from the waste
could be converted into electricity, achieving zero waste.
Japan has resources and technology Fiji may not be able
to afford as yet, but we can and must start somewhere. We
could begin with recycling, or composting and get more into
the habit of taking reusable bags for shopping.A start is to
educate our children on the importance of proper rubbish
disposal and encourage them to reuse whatever possible. If
we start at home it becomes easier for policy makers to put
in place effective systems similar to what has been done inJapan.Fiji is leading discussions at the global climate change
meeting, COP23 in Bonn in Germany as this edition goes toprint. We have the ability to steer and lead the agenda on
climate change on the world stage. But we must begin withlittle steps at home, as the Fiji government has done withenvironmental and plastic bag levies.
Whether it’s recycling, reusing or being accountable, whenit comes to our reducing our own carbon footprint, let’s startat home.
One small step at a time, Fiji can make a realistic difference
on the world stage if we choose to try as a family, acommunity and a nation.