3 ms·

My town in Japan has 7 different categories of garbage (it's different for each city). They wouldn't take my plastic garbage for ages because I didn't know wha

My town in Japan has 7 different categories of garbage (it's different for each city). They wouldn't take my plastic garbage for ages because I didn't know what "puramaaku ari" and "puramaaku nashi" meant. Eventually I figured out that it was "pla-mark", or the plastic recycling mark. So you have to put plastic with the recycling mark in "puramaaku ari" bags and plastic without the recycling mark in the "puramaaku nashi". You're required to write your name on the bags, so they deliver your badly sorted trash bags to your door :-) I think it took me about 3 months to figure it out. I had a mountain of plastic trash in my shed that I slowly disposed of over the next year. At least here it's a very effective method to get people to do their sorting. People even clean their garbage!

stephengillie 8y ago
Seattle traded one 4-bin system (glass, plastic, aluminum, garbage) for a 3-bin system (recycle, compost, garbage). And the documentation is available in numerous languages, including Japanese. :) This system sounds like a mix of both, with 1 bin more thrown in for fun. Does having such strict controls on disposal make you think twice before buying something - have you ever thought "I like that, but how would I dispose of the packaging?"
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Personally, it absolutely has. Especially some of the garbage doesn't get collected very often (for example glass is once a month) and we don't have room in the apartment to store trash. So for example, I'll buy beer in cans because aluminium compacts well in the bags and so I can store it easily. I used to prefer glass bottles because the size is convenient (600 ml rather than 500 ml, which is perfect for sharing with my wife), but in our current apartment (which has less space) we haven't bought glass bottles for years. Also, just yesterday, I had a choice between not very nice fresh tomatoes (the season really gets going in October here) and canned tomatoes. The canned tomatoes would have been much better quality for what I was doing (cooking), but I really didn't want to deal with the can (which is hard to crush and takes up a lot of room). On the downside, non-recyclable plastic is kind of at an advantage because it compacts really well. Also, burnable trash (which is basically paper and organic waste) is easy to dispose of because it is collected twice a week (hot countries need to do this). So a lot of my neighbours have mountains of cardboard and plastic bags (we're pretty careful anyway, so generally it's not too bad). It would be great if there was a compostable category that was collected often that didn't take cardboard. That way the cardboard could come once a month and I'm sure it would cut down on paper packaging. Of course, this works well because we have no room for trash. In other parts of the world where people have garages as big as my entire apartment, I think it would have considerably less effect.

stephengillie 8y ago

Seattle traded one 4-bin system (glass, plastic, aluminum, garbage) for a 3-bin system (recycle, compost, garbage). And the documentation is available in numerous languages, including Japanese. :) This system sounds like a mix of both, with 1 bin more thrown in for fun. Does having such strict controls on disposal make you think twice before buying something - have you ever thought "I like that, but how would I dispose of the packaging?"

mikekchar 8y ago
Personally, it absolutely has. Especially some of the garbage doesn't get collected very often (for example glass is once a month) and we don't have room in the apartment to store trash. So for example, I'll buy beer in cans because aluminium compacts well in the bags and so I can store it easily. I used to prefer glass bottles because the size is convenient (600 ml rather than 500 ml, which is perfect for sharing with my wife), but in our current apartment (which has less space) we haven't bought glass bottles for years. Also, just yesterday, I had a choice between not very nice fresh tomatoes (the season really gets going in October here) and canned tomatoes. The canned tomatoes would have been much better quality for what I was doing (cooking), but I really didn't want to deal with the can (which is hard to crush and takes up a lot of room). On the downside, non-recyclable plastic is kind of at an advantage because it compacts really well. Also, burnable trash (which is basically paper and organic waste) is easy to dispose of because it is collected twice a week (hot countries need to do this). So a lot of my neighbours have mountains of cardboard and plastic bags (we're pretty careful anyway, so generally it's not too bad). It would be great if there was a compostable category that was collected often that didn't take cardboard. That way the cardboard could come once a month and I'm sure it would cut down on paper packaging. Of course, this works well because we have no room for trash. In other parts of the world where people have garages as big as my entire apartment, I think it would have considerably less effect.