Events
1. ORBIT2006
ORBIT2006(OrganicRecoveryandBiologicalTreatment),

BiologicalWaste

Management,5th International Conference, one of the most influential conference inEurope, was held in Weimar, Germany from Sept 13 to Sept 15.
The program offered fruitful sessions by 230 speakers from 38countries and manyscholars, policy makers, business persons and citizens were present and they had agreat chance to deepen their knowledge about the latest movement on biomass.
Professor, Werner Bidlingmaier, who served as this conference president explained“traditional subjects of composting and anaerobic digestion were presented together
with various matters dealing with technology and product quality.”
JORA, as a supporter of this conference, cooperated with ORBIT for inviting papers andsent 6 persons as speakers.
2.Biomass MarkThe Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Japan (MAFF) has advanced thepromotion and use of biomass based on the “Biomass Nippon Strategy” which theCabinet Council agreed to in December, 2002 and this strategy has triggered a Biomass
Mark Program inauguration.
JORA, in cooperation with MAFF, has established a “Biomass Mark” and has beenpromoting a recognition program from August this year.
The Biomass Mark is designed to be put on commodities which are produced using
biomass totally or partly and is aimed to promote consumers’ use of biomass by theirseeing this mark and recognizing that it is a biomass utilized commodity.
3. Third Biomass-Asia Workshop
This workshop was held on 15-16/Nov at United Nations University (Tokyo) andTsukuba International Congress Center organized by MAFF, Ministry of Trade andIndustry (METI), Biomass-Asia Research Consortium, National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), The University of Tokyo and other various
institutes and organizations.
“Biomass Nippon Strategy” which was revised in March 2006, is emphasizing tostrengthen environmental and energy partnership among Asian nations and in order topursuit this target, policy makers, scholars and researchers from 11 foreign countries
and representatives of Japanese government, private sector and academia madespeeches on biomass and were present at the panel discussion.

About 450 people participated in this workshop which was concluded with greatsuccess.
Countries participated from ANOR member countries were Cambodia, China, Indonesia,Malaysia, Philippines, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam .
JORA participated in the poster session and the title was “Outline of Biomass Mark”(the indication program of biomass products use in Japan)
The 4th Biomass-Asia Workshop will be held in Malaysia in October (or November) in2007.
Please refer to www.simul-conf.com/biomass/en/index.html.

Information
1. Food Waste Recycling in Japan
In Japan, roughly 19 million tons of food waste were generated in 2002 in which about
10% were recycled Some 50,000 tons of food waste from household were recycled, which
account for only 0.3 per sent of the total. Most of this garbage was incinerated andlandfilled, contributing to Japan’s growing shortage of final disposal sites. Aware of thissituation, the Japanese government enacted the Food Recycling Law in 2001,aiming toreduce food waste and promote recycling.
The law on food recycling requires all entities concerned in food waste at the stages offood production, distribution and consumption, including consumers, businesses, andthe national and local governments, to endeavor to control waste generation, promote
recycling, and reduce waste volume. Furthermore, the law requires all food-relatedbusinesses to increase their food waste recycling rates by 20 percent by fiscal 2006.
As a result, the food waste recycling rate increased to about 20 percent in 2005.
Moreover, food-related businesses that are obligated by the law to take action boosted
their recycling rates to over 50 percent in 2004. On the other hand, the recycling rate ofhousehold food waste has not risen. This is partly because very few local governments
collect household food waste separately from other waste, although it would be an
essential step to promote the recycling of this waste.
Currently, most food waste is composed. Some food companies have been recyclingorganic waste into fodder for years by supplying food residue such as soybean meals,
bread and steamed rice to fodder makers for livestock feed.
Organic waste can be utilized as fuel raw material for bio-diesel and methane. Suchinitiatives are only small portion of recycling, but they have already started in Japan.

(in more detail, please refer to Japan for Sustainability Newsletter (Nov,2006) at
www.japanfs.org/)
2. For Immediate Release from “Earth Policy Institute”
We are receiving free e-mail service from above institute and would like to forward twoarticles as per attached papers; one is “Exploding U.S. Grain Demand for Automotive
Fuel Threatens World Food Security and Political Stability” by Dr. Lester R. Brown andanother is “2005 Another Record Year for Global Carbon Emissions” by Joseph A.
Florence.
3. “ An Inconvenient Truth” written by Former U.S. Vice President Al Goreand a warning by the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research(NCAR).
Mr. Gore is arguing that we can no longer afford to view global warming as a politicalissue- rather, it is the biggest moral challenges facing our global civilization.
Paramount Classics and Participant Productions present a film directed by Davis
Guggenheim, AN INCOVENIENT TRUTH.
(please refer to www.climatecrisis.net/aboutthefilm/)
NCAR is a National Science Foundation federally funded research and development
center in U.S. and according to the new research published in the December 12 issue ofGeophysical Research Letters, they predict that “The recent retreat of Arctic sea ice islikely to accelerate so rapidly that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of iceduring summertime as early as 2040.
(please refer to www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml)