Okay, so I’ve been living here for a few months, doing all the fun with the 10 different kinds of trash to take out – and I kinda got used to it. Eventually, though, I got curious and wanted to look up if it’s actually worth it and as it turns out… Japan is kinda bad at recycling!? Apparently, only plastic bottles are getting recycled properly and everything else just goes poof.
To add insult to injury, the country I lived in before, Germany, is apparently among the top 5 recyling countries in the world (and the number 1 in recyling plastic bottles, followed by Japan at number 2) and a) they did not have 10 types of trash to sort with extensive pre-throw away rituals attached to most of them and b) no one really seems to take it all that seriously, judging by how “well” separated the trash in the apartment complex I lived in was in the communal trash bins.
So what is the reason that Japan, despite having a populace willing to follow along with all those waste management rules, does not execute on the recycling part?
^(Should I just chuck everything apart from plastics and paper into burnable from now on if it’s not really getting recycled? /s)
15 comments
Part of that is because hard plastics physically cannot be recycled the same way as soft plastics, like water bottles. The only “good” way to dispose of them is to incinerate them. Even reusing a hard plastic item will still leach microplastics into the water when washed. The best you can do is reduce your plastic purchases… but even that is extremely difficult in a world where mass production uses little else. No one is recycling nearly as well as they’d like to.
Japan is the land of the cookie individually wrapped, twice, then wrapped in a box, the box itself is wrapped, then wrapped into a carrier bag, itself put into another plastic bag for protection…
Dude is just discovering that recycling is a scam invented by corporations to put the burden of getting rid of their trash on us.
Reduce, reuse. Recycling is last for a reason.
Take it with a pinch of salt but i read that most countries are a complete illusion when it comes to recycling. The UK(my home) for example is very easy to dispose of items(you get a large red bin which is collected once a week). You can throw most stuff in there other than certain types of plastic but this varies on local councils, and depends on what tue local recycling factories can process.
Then, most of it is separated and most shipped to malasia/india/thailand. Those countries are paid to receive it and they then burn it or bury it. The UK then gets to say they “recycled” it because its not their responsibility what the next country does with it.
Mostly, only bottles, some types of plastic, metal and wood/card/paper gets recycled at these plants. Its basically not much different from Japan.
Japan just has the autism of separation like most of its society with specific rules, and I believe they burn it domestically for energy instead of shipping it off to be burnt somewhere else.
Japan makes you wash your trash so you see how much you are using and feel bad so you buy less. 😂/s
I think that’s partially down to how the apartment complex or whatever wants to handle it. Mine just has burnable trash, non burnable trash, cardboard, cans, pet bottles, and then a few small containers that I think are for very specific potentially dangerous items like batteries and light bulbs. But stuff like plastic wrappers, paper scraps etc everyone just puts in burnable trash which I’m guessing is where it would end up anyway
Here is the thing, plastic itself is barely reciclable. Use glass and paper based products.
What evidence do you have for your claim that everything just goes poof?
My ex works in recycling here. Yeah different things have different rates of being successfully recycled. PET bottles have a very high rate, and mixed plastics of course is going to be lower. It’s mixed materials- they cannot save and recycle every piece and have it be economically viable.
Often the things go to different places and that is why they are needing to be separated. In a for-profit system, we pick out the things that they can treat as a materials stream and turn a profit recycling it. Of course the system can always be improved. But to think that this means every piece of it will be recycled, or that if every piece isn’t than nothing is being done, is just child-level black and white thinking.
>.< as if the recycling was that great in Germany… public bins are all mixed together, and what gets really recycled from your stuff. Do you know how little plastic bottles actually can be recycled??? [Recycling von Müll: Wie viel Plastik wird wirklich wiederverwertet? | MDR.DE](https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/wirtschaft/recycling-muell-plastik-kunststoff-sachsen-anhalt-thueringen-100.html)
Japan has no Bulgaria to put their trash to, so some of it is distributed to southeast asian countries for pay and most of it is burned (I honestly think the burnable designation of trash is much more honest than German trash management) or for land reclamation efforts. So, just like Germany and nearly all countries that “recycle”.
I would say the Japanese public takes this as serious as German public with some people being as pedantic that they need to harrass others (special pleasure throughout lockdowns) and the other side of the spectrum dumps their whatever everywhere but the designated area…
Regarding your fine print, no, please dont “chuck everything apart from plastics and paper” you follow the rules of your local trash department. There are sections such as old clothing, metal, can and small electronics. Of course batteries need to be separated. etc. It is not willy-nilly, it is just a bit different from what you are used to. Please integrate.
Wait until you realize that, in those recycling numbers, Japan counts burning things (like plastic bottles) for energy as “recycling”.
News flash though, if you actually read information on how much is really actually recycled in the world, it only adds up to about 10%, if that. Its not a secret, you can find that info easily, just no one talks about it.
Yes you should chunk everything burnable into the burnable bin. /no/s
While I share your observations, I can’t help but compare to Japanese beaches with their occasional piece of rubbish here and there, with the bay of Bangal, where the sand is roughly 50/50 mixture with plastic bags, torn flip-flop and something that could have been tampons in their earlier life, and mangroves are filled with polystyrene, used car tires and old car batteries (how do those even float?).
So, perhaps, Japan is not so bad after all, at waste management, if not recycling.
I guess the main point, AND FACT, is that Japan has wayyyyyy to much waste. Every product has unnecessary waste.
Most countries I have been to have come nowhere near the levels of Japanese wastefulness.
Recycling is not that advanced or even enough to reduce the impact this has.
All the comments denying this or just focusing on the actual recycling are delusional.
Reuse is better than Recycle and honestly japan is doing good at it
Paolo had a good behind the scenes on plastic recycling in Japan, though it didn’t dig too hard into the waste side of things.
Greg / Life Where I’m From had a good video about garbage here in Japan.
Agree with the others, reduce plastic waste where you can because recycling is broken. Reducing is very difficult here with the way things are packaged.
Biggest impact things you can individually do to help the environment are to reduce your carbon footprint by not flying and eating less or no meat (cows, pigs especially). Tough sell here.