Tokyo and New York Waste
Management Systems
A Shirai Group Presentation

Geography and Distance¡ Tokyo and New York are separated

by over 6700 miles, an ocean anddifferent climates.
¡ The differences in culture andtechnology create a great amount ofvariation in recycling systems.
¡ The following is a discussion of all
general differences between the twosystems．

Geographical Differences¡ One of the main reasons causing a lot ofdifferences in recycling is the vastlydifferent geography of the two cities.

TokyoNew York

Population:12,790,000

Population:8,363,710

Total Area: 2,187 km²,844.40 mi²

Total Area: 1,214.4 km²,468.9 mi²

Density: 5,847 /km²

Density: 10,606/km2	

Tokyo and New York became
Sister Cities in	
1960’s and were have had a strong culturaland economical exchange since then.

Geography
Tokyo¡¡¡Dominated by rivers, butis mostly on land. Water
affects travel very little.
Location andtransportation of waste isdone easily over land.
In the past Tokyo’s lackof water ways was seen
as an advantage totransportation, but it alsolimits the way waste canbe transported.

New York¡¡¡New York is made of 5
smaller cities all of which
are on different islands.
River ways greatly effecttravel.
Transportation of waste
is effected because of
the geography andbecomes very difficult
over long distances.
In the past New York hasviewed its waterways as
an obstacle, but will soon
use them to its
advantage.

Tokyo
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History of Sanitation
New York

1898 modern Tokyo
government started there
was unit for waste
1954 Bureau of Waste
Management started
2000 Bureau of Waste
Management divided andshift into 23cities
1982 recycling
started in
Shinagawaand Adachi.
1997 recycling started
in all 23
cities area.

¡¡¡

Sanitation Department
was founded in 1881 as
the Department of StreetCleaning.
The Department of StreetCleaning, reorganized as
the Department ofSanitation in 1930.
In 1970 the first recycling
operations began.
-By 1988
Recycling
was required
law in allparts of thecity.

Statistics-Waste
Annual Waste (in tons)
TokyoNew York2006

3,333,618

3,559,300

Waste Per Person per day
2006

1,060g

1,165g

Disposal Cost (in tons)
2006$564 (\56,405)$227(\22,700)

Statistics-Composition of Waste
TokyoNew YorkR efuse	 W aste

C om bustibles
M etal,	 0 .4%
G lass,	 0 .1%
ubber,	 0 .2%
C eram ics,	 0R.3%

P lastics,	 5 .8%
W ood,	 G rass,10.8%

O ther	 P aper,
6.70%
R ecyclable
P aper	 ,	 2 2.7%

O rganics,
38.9%

Fabric,	 5 .5%
P aper,	 4 4.7%

M etal,	 4 .9%
G lass,	 4 .5%
R ecyclable
P lastic,	 2 .1%
K itchen	 W aste,
32.2%

R ecyclable
C artons,	 3 2.2%

C ontruction
D ebris,	 5 .2%
Electronics,
1.3%
P lastics,	 1 2.0%

Government involvementTokyo
New York
While the Tokyo
governmentrequires that all
residential waste behandled by thegovernment it hires
private companies
to do much of thework.
¡ Additionally, muchof the industrial
waste is transported
by privatecompanies.	
¡The Sanitation
Department of New
York handles all
residential waste,
without any
outsourcing to privatecompanies, it also
enforces all sanitationlaw.
¡ Commercial andindustrial waste is also
handled mostly by thegovernment, though
there are more privatecompanies in thisindustry.
¡Government Involvement
TokyoNew York

Government Involvement-regulation
TokyoNew York¡

There are 53 wastetransportationcompanies and 200
total that arerelatively large inTokyo and thegovernment needs tohave strict regulations
for them as well asresidents andcommercialcompanies.

New York’s Sanitation
Department holds amonopoly on
residential waste anddoes not need toworry abouttransportation
regulation because it
already conducts mostof them.
¡ The department onlyregulates a few
private transportationcompanies.
¡Facilities
Tokyo
Tokyo has createdmany new recycling
and incinerationplants.
¡ Initiatives like ecotowns have also
contributed to theimprovement ofrecycling technology.

New York¡

Many of the recycling
facilities in New Yorkare outdated and newtechnology.
¡ The newer facilities
are usually private.
¡Facilities¡ While New York is building its first newpublic recycling facility for the first time inover 10 years Tokyo has a numberof new plants run byprivate companies.
¡ New York recycling
plants that are
private are very small
and generate littlerevenue.

Landfills¡ Both New York and Tokyo are planning on

closing its last landfills very soon. The
city governments realize the need toforce private industry to start to recycle.

Landfills¡ The Fresh Kill landfill in New Yorkwas originally due to close in 2001,but due to the September 11thattacks was kept open. It receives
all types of non recyclable
materials.
¡ Tokyo will continue to keep its
landfill open, but will close it toplastics in 2011. The Tokyo
government believes that it cankeep the landfill open for a many
more years.

Transportation
Tokyo¡¡

The Tokyo government hires
53 companies and there areabout 200 major companies
doing waste collection.
Tokyo law states that theproducers of waste must
recycle it and the usually hire
private firms to collect it.

New York¡¡¡

New York Sanitation
department is the largest
waste collection andtransportation agent in NewYork.
In the private sector 3 privatecompanies control over 50%of the market.
New York Government also
requires that waste is recycled
by producers, but mostbusinesses use the Sanitation
department

TransportationTokyo
Private companies
mostly use small
trucks to transport
waste to recycling
plants and the¡ Tokyo has noalternative way totransport waste,
except in a few
situations like Araikecompany wherewaste by ship is asmall percentage oftotal wastedelivered.
¡New York¡As a solution to an
earlier problem, NYC
started to use water
ways to transport
waste, keeping fuelcosts down as well as
maintenance costs
for the large trucks.

Collection of waste in public places
TokyoNew YorkDue to concerns about
terrorist threats Tokyo
has a limited numberof public garbagecans.
¡ Most of the garbagecans that are available
separate waste andrecyclables very well,lowering collection
costs.
¡ The streets of Tokyo
remain much cleaner
and free of garbage
and recyclables.
¡¡

¡

Throughout New York
there is a much larger
number waste andrecycling cans.
This is working for New
York as an effort tolower recycling collection
costs, butdoes notimprovestreetcleanliness.

Incineration
Tokyo¡¡

Tokyo has new andefficient incinerators for
waste management andenergy generation.
Tokyo’s incinerators aretechnologically moreadvanced than anything
the NYC ever had. Even in
the 1980’s they werebetter.

New York¡¡

New York madeincinerators illegal in 1989
and the last one wastaken apart in 1996.
New York had extremely
inefficient incinerators andthis is part of the reason
they were made illegal.

IncinerationTokyo¡¡Incineration remained
legal in Tokyo partly
because there was noalternative, as there wasno land available forlandfills.
In Japan, incineration
technology continued togrow and evolve.

New York¡¡

New York, and theUnited States have large
amounts of free space,
so when incineration wasmade illegal landfills
were the alternative forwaste processing.
Additionally, waste
incineration was madeillegal because large
buildings, schools andoffice buildings had
furnaces with low
efficiency that polluted
the air.

Incineration
Tokyo¡Tokyo kept its
incineration on anindustrial scale andmuch more efficient.
New plants like Sincere
and TRP are able toproduce clean energy
with incineration.

New York¡¡Because of theincreasing cost of waste
disposal and the closingof the State Island
Landfill, New York isagain considering
opening incinerators.
However, the bad imageof incineration and thebelief that it is a stepback in waste
management will most
likely keep New York
from developing newincinerators.

Recycling Culture¡ One of the biggest and unquantifiable

differences between the two cities is theattitude the general public has towards
recycling.
¡ Though they are difficult to measure,there are different residential responses
to the need to recycle.

Cultural Differences¡

In Japan, the culture
seems to dictate theimportance ofrecycling for thegreater good ofsociety. People seemto be more aware of
the importance of
their contribution tothe effort.

¡In New York much of
the population refuses
to see the importanceof recycling. Many
New Yorkers still do
not separate theirrecyclable materials
and this keeps costs
high.

Cultural Differences¡¡

Because a small part ofTokyo’s population isimmigrant, there is lessneed to educate people,
as most already know
about recycling.
In Japan social
responsibility isunderstood and followed
a lot more than in theUS. Most Japanese
understand the need torecycle, so they do a
better job of collecting
and separating waste.

¡¡The effort to educate thepopulation about
recycling seem muchgreater in New York. The
Sanitation department
invests a lot of money inteaching the youth about
the importance ofrecycling.
The New York
educational effort is alsopart of a bigger ofcreating a Green activist
culture in America.