Figure 4-3-2 Flow of Recycling of Major Products

Reference: Ministry of the Environment

appliances to retailers when they replace the items, and pay collection, delivery, and recycling fees. The waste home appliances handed over to the retailers are then given to manufacturers to collect resources such as iron, copper, and aluminum for recycling. The recycling ratios (recycled weight/recycled throughput) for these four home appliance items in FY 2010 were: 88% for air conditioners; 85% for cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs; 79% for LCD and plasma TVs; 76% for refrigerators and freezers; and 86% for washing machines and dryers.

Collection and recycling by manufacturers of personal computers, sealed accumulators, and automotive batteries are obligatory under the Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources. The itemized recycling ratios (recycled weight/recycled throughput) in FY 2010 were: 76.1% for desktop computers (main units); 55.6% for laptop computers; and 50.0% to 76.6% for sealed accumulators.

For automobiles, the Law for the Recycling of End-of-Life Vehicles requires the collection and proper disposal of chlorofluorocarbons, airbags, and shredder dust (automobile shredder residue produced at the time of disposal). In addition, business operators voluntarily collect useable parts (including engines, doors, and tires) for reuse. Moreover, useful metals such as iron are collected from leftover scrapped vehicles. Thanks to these efforts, the recycling rate for vehicles has reached nearly 95%.

Most copy machines are collected by manufacturers, since these products are highly likely to be on lease. Copy machines are designed to be easily reused or recycled before they are even sold. Specifically, the machines indicate grades to show which materials have been used or design strength to ensure easy recycling. Parts removed from the main unit of collected copying machines and optical parts with minimal deterioration are reused again in new products. Parts that are not reusable are collected as resources; these include iron, stainless steel, and plastics. These efforts have helped achieve a recycling rate of 99% or more (Japan Business Machine and Information System Industries Association).

Steel cans, aluminum cans, and similar products that are primarily made of iron or aluminum and that can be easily recycled are separately collected by local governments to recover the metal resources. Thanks to active collection and recovery of these metals, Japan has achieved a high recycling rate for both steel and aluminum cans: 89.4% for steel cans (Japan Steel Can Recycling Association); and 92.6% for aluminum cans (Japan Aluminum Can Recycling Association).

Looking at data for specific metal resources, those such as iron (Fe), aluminum (Al), copper (Cu), and lead (Pb) show relatively high recycling rates due to their being distributed in large quantities and their ease of separation into a single material (Figure 4-3-3).

However, metal resources other than the above are generally disposed of as waste in a condition containing one or more metal substances. These metals must therefore be separated through a screening, sorting, or refining process, which translates to high resource collection costs due to the extensive business investment required.

For example, when removing gold or silver from electronic parts, items containing a high concentration of gold or silver are collected, and a secondary separation process is then

Figure 4-3-3 Recycling Ratios by Metal Element

Hydrogen

Source: National Institute for Materials Science

Figure 4-3-4 Useful Metals Collected by Local Governments During FY 2010

Metallic element	Ratio collected $ ^{*} $
Iron	66.8%
Copper	21.7%
Silver	4.0%
Gold	4.6%
Aluminum	52.9%
Stainless steel	16.5%
Rare metals	2.6%

Note: Ratio collected refers to the percentage of local governments collecting the metals (number of local governments that responded: 1,748)

Source: Ministry of the Environment

performed to collect these substances via recovery of other base metals such as copper. The specific process involves: (1) heating the material at high temperatures to melt and oxidize it so that iron, sulfur, and other substances can be removed; (2) creating an intermediate product called matte; (3) melting and oxidizing the matte at an even higher temperature to increase its purity; (4) producing crude copper at 99.5% purity; and (5) going through an electrorefining process (a process that dissolves the crude copper into a water solution to separate out copper once again using electricity) to produce 99.99% electrolytic copper. The gold, silver, platinum, and other substances contained in the crude copper can be separated and collected through the electrorefining process.

When collected electronic or other parts have high concentrations of gold or silver, it is possible to remove the metals through a wet reduction method using nitric acid (a process that removes specific metals by changing the concentration of an acid or similar substance in solution).

To recycle accumulators such as lithium-ion batteries, substances are extracted for recycling after removing impurities (e.g., battery cases and non-recyclables). Since one or more metals are still contained at this stage, manganese, cobalt, nickel, lithium, and other metals are separated in the form of a solution using several types of solutions according to the substance. Finally, electrifying the separated solutions can abstract high-purity metals. This process is called electrorefining.

In general, it is difficult for local governments to perform the complicated process explained above when collecting metals at waste disposal facilities. This is because most metal resources other than iron and aluminum disposed of as waste are landfilled instead of recycled (Figure 4-3-4).