THE SUNDAY GLEANER, NOVEMBER 10, 2019 | NEWS

B11

From trash to cash

A worker at the Tsurumi Recycling/Incineration plant in Yokohama, Japan, monitors operations as oversized garbage iscrushed in a grinder. PHOTOS BY CHRISTOPHER SERJU

Making solid waste
more manageable
Christopher Serju

awareness campaigns at train
stations, supermarkets, elementary
schools, and kindergartens, as well
as hosting information sessions on
waste separation at the community
level.
Persons who put out unsorted
waste are first given guidance on
what to do and, if they persist, arefined. However, the city places
greater emphasis on compliancerather than punishment. From allindications, it has worked well for
Yokohama and is a standard othercities would do well to emulate.

Gleaner WriterY

OKOHAMA, JAPAN’S
second-largest and mostpopulous municipality,with a population in excess of
3.5 million people, is the capitalof Kanagawa prefecture.
Growth in trade and commerce,
which quickly propelled Yokohama
from a fishing village in 1859, hada downside. As its economy grew,
so did the population, bringing anabundance of domestic, commercial
and industrial waste.
From just over 500,000 people
in 1955 generating 0.12 million
metric tonnes of garbage, by 1999
an estimated 3.4 million residents
were responsible for some 1.7
million tonnes of solid waste. The
city took action and, by 2014, as
the number of residents inchedcloser to four million, Yokohama
recorded a dramatic 43.2 per centdecline in solid waste output of 0.8
metric tonnes.
It achieved this by making solid
waste much more manageable. Fourincineration centres, four recycling
centres fed by 18 collection offices
supplying four transit centres andone final deposit site was key to
Yokohama’s success.

PRACTICAL, ACHIEVABLE
MEASURES
With the Tsurumi combination
recycling/incineration plantcoming on stream in 1995, it went
about setting practical, achievablemeasures for garbage collection,
separation, packaging, storage, anddisposal.
Residents put out household

christopher.serju@
gleanerjm.com

Manager for the Policy Coordination Division in theResources and Waste Recycling Bureau, Tomohiro
Kamewaka, makes a point about the 43 per cent drop insolid waste collected, as a result of the successful waste
management programme. CHRISTOPHER SERJU
waste and recyclables at the 74,000
collection points, each of which
serves 10-30 households. Waste isseparated by type in transparent/
translucent bags and put out by 8a.m. on collection days.
Garbage collection trucks comein three different sizes, medium withmaximum laden weight of 3,000

kilogrammes, small with a carrycapacity of 2,000 kilogrammes,
and a light-duty dump truck which
can carry 350 kilogrammes. Theirnarrow configuration makes thesevehicles ideally suited for collection
on narrow streets. All are either
diesel-powered or hybrid.
The city hosts ongoing public

THE SUCCESS of the Tsurumi
recycling/incineration centre in
Yokohama, Japan, which has kept
a tight lid on its solid-waste growth,is due largely to its matching ofheavy-duty machinery with aninvestment in human capital, whichmakes for a seamless operation.
During a recent guided tourof the plant by participants in theAssociation for Promotion ofInternational Promotion (APIC)
Japan Journalism Fellowship 2019,
those present got a first-hand look atwhat really happens behind its walls.
It begins with the sorting of wastewith the machinery known as a bag
breaker literally ripping the garbagefilled plastic bags apart, dumping
their contents unto the bag breaker
conveyor. A worker then removes
the pieces of bags by hand as
plastic bottles, glass bottles, andcans, among other recyclables, areunloaded on to the separator. All theused bags and other packaging aresent on to the incinerator.
The separator allows heavier
bottles to drop through on to anotherconveyor belt where workers sortthem by colour, while the lighter cansand PET bottles continue straightacross. From the magnetic separator
the steel cans are channelled into
the steel press machine, which thencrunches and compacts them.
The PET bottles are hand-sorted
before going on to a bottle baler
which crushes and bales them inthe process, while another powerfulmagnet simultaneously sends thealuminium cans flying across theroom, while dirt and debris drop into
a container. The cans are collected by
the aluminium press machine which
compresses them.
But what of the many other typesof solid waste?
They are also separated into
specific categories before being
properly disposed of, including:burnable garbage; non-burnablegarbage; spray cans; dry cell batteries;
plastic containers and packaging;small metal items; used paper boxes;
old cloth and oversized garbage.
This last category includes
mattresses, sofas, desks, and chairs,
but excludes TVs, refrigerators,
washers, dryers, and personal
computers. Special arrangement must
be made for disposing of these, whilesmall household appliances less than
50 centimetres in size, made mostlyof plastic go to burnable garbage.
Also qualifying for this category are
kitchen scraps from which the excesswater has been drained.
christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com

Minoru Nakagawa of the Resources and Waste Cycling
Bureau explains that, even though they are the same size,
the green-labelled bale of compressed aluminium cansweighs 25 kilogrammes compared to the bale of compressedsteel cans weighing 60 kilogrammes.