This article is inspired by a recent comment made by Shiira on “recycling made easy”, stating that her experiences in Japan have had a major impact on the way she thinks about recycling! Okay, you’ve got me curious, I’m sure a few of my readers as well.
**Head over to Gisuru to see Shiiras personal experiences with recycling in Japan!!
First off I’m not here to bash my country. Instead I see the benefit of taking example from a smaller, highly populated country, which feels the pressures today that we will definitely be feeling in the near future…
Recycling: Japan vs. USA
Solid Waste
United States: Sends close to 70% of its solid waste to landfills!
Japan: Sends a remarkable 16% of the country’s solid waste to landfills!!
Categories
United States: Paper, Aluminum, Plastics (some), and Glass.
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Japan: On average, the categories remain burnable, non-burnable, and recyclable. Yokohama, Japan on the other hand, has 10 categories of garbage, and provides its residents with a 27- page booklet on how to sort their trash, including detailed instructions on recycling 518 common items. Paper for example is sorted into three bins: newspaper, cardboard, and other printed materials. I was lucky enough to find this English translation of a 14 page Yokohama booklet on how to recycle.
Peer Leadership
United States: City organizers, businesses, and individual recycling efforts systematized through non-profit programs such as the National Recycling Coalition.
Japan: Utilizes “community leaders” on a more local level to organize how waste will be handled. There are also rumors of how garbage that hasn’t been properly sorted will get dumped back on the owner’s doorstep by vindictive neighbors who will actually go through the person’s garbage to ascertain identity.
Accountability
United States: Very little social accountability or motivation to recycle. An increasing amount of non-degradable toxic garbage is leading to further pollution and a decreasing amount of natural land and resources.
Japan: Social motivation to preserve the land, reuse or recycle resources, and waste less. Along with large amounts of peer pressure, I have heard of families even being evicted for not abiding by their community recycling codes!
[...] Fievel who I met through the e-Learning website, Edufire wrote a most awesome article titled Recycling: Japan vs. USA. Go give it a looksee and gain some valuable [...]