■ Japan Environmental Sanitation Center

JESC NEWSNo.13
Jan 2012

Management of Disaster Waste Generated
Accompanied withTohoku-Region Pacific Coast Earthquake
The year of 2011 is the year hard to forget for

accepting the requests from municipalities.

all Japanese. Tremendous earthquake hit

Some were sent to the head office of MOE

the Tohoku-region pacific coast on March 11th.

and closely worked with the ministry staff.

The earthquake destroyed some parts ofIn addition, many staff specializing insocial infrastructures and buildings but hugevarious environmental issues coped withtsunami occurred by the earthquake also

emergency inquiries and showed possible

brought further damages and killed manyand favorable solutions to the people whopeople. Consequently, nearly 16 thousand

were in environmental difficulties.

people were killed, some 3,500 people arestill missing and more than 940 thousandhouses and building were totally or partly
damaged.
Though huge amount of disaster waste,which

exceeded20

milliontons,

wasgenerated mostly by tsunami, rescuing those
who suffered and missed naturally tookprecedence at first. The Self-Defense Force ofJapan, SDF,

including rescue teams frommany

countries

clearedmissing

peopleanddebrisenabletofind

Tsunami brought sea bottom sediment which
may include hazardous organic matters andcontaminated living environment

minimumtransportation for emergency vehicles. Japan
Environmental Sanitation Center, JESC, a
sub-branch of Ministry of the Environment(MOE)quicklyorganized

theDisaster

Assistance Team and started necessary
activities.
SomeJESC

engineerscollected

theinformation on the situations of waste
disposal facilities in the area, visited thesites and checked states of the plants

Japanese houses and buildings are originally strong
enough against earthquake but tsunami flew almost
everything away■ Japan Environmental Sanitation CenterNo.13 January 2012 ②

Disaster waste management work started in

The accident in the Fukushima No.2

earnestthenuclear power station, however, made theearthquake. Some JESC staff, as waste

management complicated. Wastes weremanagement experts, patrolled the sufferedcontaminated with radio active particles.

cities and towns to give timely advices

Also, living environment in surrounding

together with MOE staff and staff of thearea was contaminated with those particles,

Nationaland it is considered that the work for

StudiessometwoInstituteandmonths

forEnvironmental
withclearing contaminated items and wastes

municipality staff to proceed necessary tasks

will generate additional wastes. New law

such

waste

was enacted to solve the problem that wemanagement plan. Disaster waste whichhave not experienced before and necessary

would affect to living environment waspractice code to wisely implement the law iscleared by the end of August and thenow under examination.

assubsequent

continue

after

developing

stepfortowork

betterprocessing

waste

collected into temporary storage yard is now

We, staff of the JESC, deeply appreciate forsteadily moving forward according to theevery heart-warming concern that you gave

national guideline.

us. We received so many e-mails and gentle
comments which encouraged us from thefriends

whospent

goodtimes

ininternational cooperation events such asconferencesandJICAtrainingetc.

Overcoming sad incident, we are pleased
that we could have many guests fromvarious countries this year and soon areable to hold international conferences suchas“3RConferencefor

Asian

LocalGovernments”. We, All the JESC staff, look
Meeting with municipality staff in patrol activity
done by staff of MOE, NIES and JESC

forward to seeing you again and exchange
significant

information,thus

wewillcontinue to endeavor to achieve this.

(Shoichi HAYAMI)

Appropriate separation of disaster waste isimportant to realize smooth clearing work

■ Japan Environmental Sanitation Center

No.13 January 2012 ③“the 4th 3R Conference for Asian Local Governments”
organized by JESC will be held in January, 2012
“The 1st 3R Conference for Asian LocalGovernments”
organizedbyJapan
Environmental Sanitation Center, JESC,
held on Oct. 28th 2008 in Saitama city, andthe 2nd conference was held on Oct. 25th2009 in Fukuoka City.
The 3rd conference was held on Nov. 15th
2010 in Kobe city with the theme of “Waste
Separation and Recycling”. The conference
invited 4 Japanese local governments
including
Hyogo,
Fukuoka,Miyagiprefectures and Kobe city, along with 10
Asiancities
includingPhnomPenh/Cambodia, Shenyang/China, Padan
and Surabaya/Indonesia, Ulsan/South Korea,
Vientiane/Laos, Seberang Perai/Malaysia,
Calbayog/ Philippines, and Phitsanulok/Thailand, Hanoi/Vietnam.
The keynote speech was given by eachparticipant with Hyogo prefecture asdirecting chairperson. After the speech,
discussion session was successfully wrapped
up by Masaru TANAKA, the coordinator. He
is a professor of Tottori University ofEnvironmentalStudies.
Themajor
discussion points were “Roles of eachstakeholder such as local government,enterprises and citizens” and “How topromote waste separation and recycling”.

environment as well as to the reduction ofgreenhouse gas emissions. In addition, we
have come to a common view that to further
increase these effects, we need to makeseparation and recycling more active and toinvolve
thesurrounding
municipal
governments in it.
(full text:
http://www.jesc.or.jp/environmentS/3r_conf
erence/img/kobe_en.pdf)
The 4th conference will be held in January
2012 in Tokyo. We, JESC, are looking
forward to your participation for theconference.
DATE: January 30 - 31, 2012
VENUE: Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo (2-2-1
Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-Ku, Tokyo)
THEME:
1st Session: 3R and Cooperation among
Local Governments
2nd Session: Technology Transfer
3rd Session: Disaster Waste Management
ORGANIZER:
Japan Environmental
Sanitation CenterCO-ORGANIZER:
Ministry of the Environment, Japan/Tokyo
Metropolitan Government

The opinions throughout the conference wassummarized as “KOBE DECLARATION”
and adopted by all participants.
＜KOBE DECLARATION＞ (for short)Today‟ s participants have fully recognized,
through reports from various local
government and the discussion about them,that the separation and recycling of solid
waste contribute to the conservation ofnaturalresources
andtheliving(Yoshiko MATSUMURA)■ Japan Environmental Sanitation Center

No.13 January 2012 ④

Editor’s CommentDragons live in each single one of us
This newsletter shows you JESC„s activities
concerning disaster waste treatment inJapan. Now we just have begun taking a firststep to clean up environment polluted byradio active substances. We won‟t be beaten.
Please imagine a clean, beautiful Japan.
We will be able to clean Japan up and makeher more beautiful than ever.
We are quite confidence to accomplish thistask in three years.
By the way I want to give you all an
impressive speech.
In order to encourage Japanese elementary
school students who were struck by thetsunami, the King of Bhutan Wantichu toldthem and I quote:“Do you know that dragons exist?
I‟ve seen the dragon.
These dragons live in each single one of us.
Dragons eat their own experiences.

And become stronger and stronger over theyears.
And you must be the center of thesedragons.”
I think he wanted to tell us the following:
Never look backward,Let‟s keep on moving forward together.
Additionally I will give you my favorite
Japanese words.
Japanese “Arigatou” means thank you as youknow.
“Mottainai” means no waste, it's still valuable.
Now this word became international one.
And Japanese “Kizuna” means ties.
We never walk alone.
We are thinking of you.
I will give you Kizuna.
I wish our Kizuna will create the future.
I expect your mail expressing your dragons.
See you.
(Hideaki FUJIYOSHI)

JESC NEWS No.13
January, 2012

Publisher: Akio OKUMURA
Editor: Hideaki FUJIYOSHI
Staff: T. Miyagawa, S. Hayami,K. Nakamura, Y. Matsumura
Published by: Japan Environmental
Sanitation Center (JESC)

Address: 10-6 Yotsuyakami-cho,
Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki-city,210-0828 JAPANTEL: +81-44-288-4937
FAX: +81-44-288-5217
E-mail: kokusai@jesc.or.jp