Figure2-11 Number of Soil Contamination Cases Identified by Fiscal Year

Source: The results of the survey on Enforcement Status of the Soil Contamination Countermeasures Act & Numbers and trends of soil contamination investigations and countermeasures in the FY2007.

## 3 Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society ~Creating economic development through the establishment of a sound material-cycle society~

## (1) The material flow of our country

As a first step to the establishment of a Sound Material-Cycle Society, it is essential to know the amount of resources we are collecting, consuming and dumping.

When we examine the material flow of our country in FY2006, there were 18.2 billion tons of total material input, and 750 million, about a half, were used in the construction of buildings and infrastructures. Moreover, 170 million tons were exported as products, 490 million tons were used in the energy consumption and manufacturing process and 580 million tons of wastes were generated. Out of these items, 230 million tons were subjected to cyclical use, equivalent to 12.5% of the total material input amount (Figure3-1).

In order that a Sound Material-Cycle Society can be established, the Second “Fundamental Plan for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society (A Cabinet decision in March 2008, hereafter called the “Fundamental Plan for a Sound Material-Cycle Society”), has set new goals for the indexes concerning the “Entrance,” “Exit” and “Circulation” of materials, this refers to the three different sections of the material flow (meaning the flow of materials and goods), where appropriate and balanced measures for reduction, reuse, recycling and disposal of resources should be developed.

The target year of each index is assumed to be FY2015

Indexes	Resource productivity	Cyclical use rate	The amount of final disposal
goals	about 420 thousand yen per ton	about 14-15%	about 23 million tons

1) Resource productivity (equals to GDP/divided by the input of natural resources and others) In FY 2006 it was about 348 thousand yen per ton. (a 33% increase on FY2000; 260 thousand yen per ton.)

2) Cyclical use rate (equals the amount of recycling utili-zation/divided by the amount of circulative utilization + input amount of natural resources and others) FY2006 was about 12.5%. (a 2.6% increase on FY2000; about 10% for that year.)

3) The amount of final disposal (equals the amount of land filling of waste) FY2006 was about 29 million tons. (a 49% decrease from FY2000; about 56 million tons for that year.)

The characteristics of how the circulative resources generated in our country are cyclically used are shown as follows. The biomass type circulative resources account for 54% of the entire amount of waste generation. Their contents are livestock excrement, organic sludge derived from water processing in the sewage works or manufacturing, wood wastes derived from construction sites and the manufacturing process of wood products, and household kitchen waste (garbage).

The major usage of cyclical use is for compost and feed in agriculture. Besides this, polluted mud is used for brick, and woodwaste for reproduction wood board.

Nonmetal mineral (soil and rocks) type circulative resources account for 37% of the entire amount of generation of wastes. Their contents are, debris from construction sites, slag from the iron and steel manufacturing/non-ferrous metal/cast metal industries, non-organic sludge from construction sites and water purification plants, and glass bottles from households and restaurants.

The major cyclical use is in civil engineering and