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The city where I live has 14 sorts of garbage. You have to sort, clean, put it in clear special bags and write your name on it. If you don't do it right, it d
by mikekchar 7y ago
The city where I live has 14 sorts of garbage. You have to sort, clean, put it in clear special bags and write your name on it. If you don't do it right, it doesn't get removed (and your neighbours gang up to figure out who screwed it up if you don't write your name). Of course, it's Japan and people are used to following rules, but the system works quite well.
One of the things I don't like about these kinds of issues is the lack of understanding that garbage is as much a social problem as it is a technical problem. We assume that people can't/won't do things and evolve a culture where it is true.
- mediaman 7y agoI agree. In the States, we largely adopted "blue bin" recycling that encourages people to dump everything they think might be recyclable into the same blue bin. The idea was that this would encourage high recycling rates, and eventually technology would catch up and figure out how to efficiently sort everything. So far, that hasn't happened, so we just got high recycle rates but terrible streams of material that are not economic to recycle. I agree that the Japanese approach would be a better one, even though it would take large social change, and would result in lower recycle rates for quite a while.