维里蒂·莱恩
If you take a walk in a city in Japan, you might notice something. Where are all the rubbish bins!? Seriously, you’ve been carrying this empty onigiri wrapper around for an hour now and you just want, no need, to find a bin! If you do find one of these rare public trashcans, you’ll notice that it isn’t just one, but many different bins grouped together.
Let’ talk trash.
If you have ever lived in Japan, you’ve probably discovered that once you are responsible for your household’s garbage, things get a lot more complicated. Have you been faced with the challenge of sorting and cleaning your garbage meticulously, making sure to put it out on the right day in the right colored bag, or suffered the shame of having it returned to you?
After these experiences it might seem like Japan is an incredibly clean and eco-friendly country that is super keen on recycling. However, things are even more complex if we look a little deeper.
Sort it out!
If you have moved to Japan, one of the first things you’ll need to do is get hold of your town’s gomi guide. Gomi ごみ (sometimes written ゴミ) is the Japanese word for garbage. For example, the gomi guide from Niihama City is forty-two pages long, and that kind of length isn’t unusual.
There’s no simple way to describe Japan’s rubbish sorting system. Waste disposal is carried out at the municipal level. That means that each city, town, and district has a completely different system. Even Tokyo’s twenty-three wards have different systems.
So even if you’ve mastered one system, that doesn’t help you all that much if you move somewhere else. For example, my town’s garbage was sorted into burnable (red bags), non-burnable (blue bags), paper, plastic, PET bottles, cans, styrofoam, newspapers, cartons, unbroken glass, and batteries (white bags, with different collection days). That was a fairly relaxed system, comparatively. I knew people who had to sort out their namagomi 生ごみ (food waste) from their burnables and their envelopes from their paper.
Some types were collected every week, some every fortnight. Other types were collected anywhere from once a month to once a year. Over sized garbage was collected twice a year and you had to buy a special sticker to pay for disposal. You also had to buy specific garbage bags that were only usable in your town. You couldn’t just put your burnable garbage in any red bag; it had to be a special, approved red bag.
Why is sorting so strict?
You might think that you are being made to do all this trash sorting as some kind of punishment, but there are some pretty important reasons behind it. Japan has a set of specific challenges when it comes to dealing with its waste. The biggest of these is lack of land suitable for landfill. In the 1960s it became clear that, with it’s rising population, Japan would have to find a solution for its garbage or sink under the weight of its trash.
According to Waste Atlas1 each person in Japan produces an average of 356.2kg of waste per year and as a whole, Japan generates 45,360,000 tons of municipal waste per year, ranking 8th in the world. Unlike larger countries like the United States and China, there simply isn’t the space to bury it all. Japan had to find another solution.
Where does it all go?
You might think that you are sorting your waste so that it can be more easily recycled. But a happy, new recycled life is by no means the final destination for most of those papers you’ve torn into the correct sizes and plastic wrappers you’ve sorted. When it comes to its recycling rate, Japan (20.8%) lags behind other industrialized nations that also face problems with lack of space, such as the Netherlands (51%) and the UK (39%). No, your rubbish is probably going to be burned.
“Fluidized bed” is a very efficient way of burning materials that don’t normally burn easily. Your carefully sorted rubbish will be suspended in a hot, bubbling bed of ash and other particulates as jets of air are blown through it.
This thermal treatment of municipal solid waste does have some advantages over other forms of incineration. It is cheaper, takes up less space, and produces fewer nitrogen oxides and less sulphur dioxide. It can also be used as part of a Waste to Energy system, using the resultant heat to create power. Given Japan’s problems with producing electricity this is certainly a big advantage. Although this method might not have as clean an image as recycling, it does suit Japan.
Returning to recycling
What happens to that 20.8% that is recycled? One success story can be found with PET bottles. PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate and these are used to make the drink bottles you’ll find in vending machines and convenience stores all over Japan. After you’ve downed your delicious oolong cha or lychee and salt beverage, be sure to pop that bottle into a PET bottle bin. Japanese companies have increased the percentage of used PET bottle plastic that can be used to make new PET bottles. PET bottles can be dissolved and filtered at high temperatures, producing a pure resin that can be turned back into new PET bottles.
PET bottles that do not undergo this filtration process can also be turned into other things. A fiber can be spun from recycled PET bottles, which can then be made into clothes, bags, carpets, and doggy raincoats.
Use landfill to make more land!
Japan has one more solution for dealing with its trash. If there isn’t enough land to bury the trash, why not just make more land with the trash? You might be familiar with land reclamation (also called land fill, but not landfill, just to be confusing) from seeing pictures of the The Palm Islands, built off Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Well Japan has also used this technology of filling in an area of water with heavy rock, cement, dirt, and garbage to make new land, though not in quite such fancy shapes. The Chūbu Centrair International Airport near Nagoya and Kansai International Airport are both built on artificial islands. In Tokyo, where land prices are astronomical, 249 square kilometres (96 square miles) of land has been reclaimed in Tokyo Bay through land fill.
Your old onigiri wrapper will probably be burned in a fluidized bed, but there’s a chance it will become a part of Japan’s newest island.
如果在一个日本城市逛一圈,可能会注意到一个现象:垃圾箱在哪里啊!?说真的,你已经拿着这个日式饭团的空包装袋逛了一小时了,只不过想要,不,是需要,找个垃圾箱!如果你真能找到罕见的公共垃圾箱,便会发现,它们从不单个出现,而是许多不同的垃圾箱排在一起。
来聊聊垃圾吧。
如果曾经在日本生活过,很可能就会知道,一旦亲自负责处理家庭垃圾,情况就会变得复杂得多。是否面临过这样的挑战:一丝不苟地把垃圾分门别类,清理干净,确保装进颜色正确的垃圾袋里,在正确的日期送出去?或者因为没做到上述这些而遭受垃圾被送还给你的耻辱?
经历了这些之后,似乎会觉得日本是一个非常清洁环保的国家,非常热衷于废物回收再利用。然而,如果看得再深入些,其实更复杂。
分门别类!
如果已移居日本,首先要做的一件事就是找到你所在城市的ごみ指南。ごみ(有时也写成ゴミ)就是日语“垃圾”。例如,新居滨市的ごみ指南长达42页,且这种长度并不罕见。
日本的垃圾分类体系无法简单描述。废物处理由地方政府来执行。这意味着每个城市、乡镇和地区都有完全不同的体系。甚至东京市的23个区也各有各的体系。
因此,即使已经熟练掌握了一种体系,只要搬到别的地方,那就没什么用了。例如,我住的小镇垃圾被分为:可燃垃圾(装红色袋子),不可燃垃圾(装蓝色袋子),纸张、塑料、PET树脂瓶、金属罐、泡沫塑料、报纸、硬纸箱、未破碎的玻璃和电池(装白色袋子,各有不同的垃圾收集日期)。相对而言,这是一个非常宽松的体系了。有些我认识的人,他们住的地方要求从可燃垃圾里把厨余垃圾单独分出来,从纸张垃圾里把信封单独分出来。
有些类型的垃圾每周收集一次,有些每两周收集一次。其他类型的垃圾从每月收集一次到每年收集一次的都有。大尺寸垃圾每年收集两次,必须买专用的贴纸来支付垃圾处理的费用。另外,还必须购买仅在所住城镇中可用的特定垃圾袋。可燃垃圾也不是随便什么红色袋子都能装的;必须用那种特殊的、经过批准的红色垃圾袋。
为什么分类要求这么严格?
你可能会认为被迫做这些垃圾分类简直就像受罚,但是这背后其实有非常重要的原因。在废物处理方面,日本面临着一系列具体挑战。其中最严峻的挑战就是缺乏适合填埋垃圾的土地。20世纪60年代,人们清楚意识到,随着人口的增长,日本将不得不设法解决垃圾问题,否则就会被垃圾的重量压得沉入大海。
根据“垃圾地图”网站的数据,日本人均每年产生356.2公斤垃圾,日本全国每年产生4536万吨城市垃圾,居世界第8位。与美国、中国等领土较大的国家不同,日本根本没有掩埋这么多垃圾的空间。日本不得不找到另一种解决方案。
垃圾都去哪儿了?
你可能以为将垃圾仔细分类可以让废物更容易回收再利用。但是,对于大多数被撕成正确尺寸的纸片和分好类的塑料包装袋来说,被回收后再次拥有快乐、全新的生命绝不是它们的归宿。在回收率方面,日本(20.8%)落后于其他同样面临填埋空间不足问题的工业化国家,例如荷兰(51%)和英国(39%)。跟你以为的不一样,你的垃圾很可能会被焚烧掉。
要焚烧通常情况下不易燃的东西,有种非常有效的方法叫“流化床”。经过仔细分选后的垃圾将悬吊在充满滚烫沸腾的灰烬和其他颗粒的炉膛中,高速气流不停喷射穿透炉膛。
与其他焚化形式相比,对城市固体废物的这种热处理确实具有优势。这种方法更便宜,占用空间更少,产生的氮氧化物和二氧化硫也更少。这还可以成为“废物转能源”系统的一部分,燃烧产生的热量可以用来发电。考虑到日本发电方面的问题,这无疑是个巨大的优势。尽管这种方法表面上看可能没有回收再利用那么干净,但确实适合日本。
再聊聊回收
那回收的20.8%垃圾会怎样呢?PET瓶就是个成功的例子。PET即聚对苯二甲酸乙二醇酯,用于制造饮料瓶,在日本全国各地的自动售货机和便利店中购买饮料时都能买到这种瓶装的。喝完美味的乌龙茶或荔枝加盐饮料后,请一定要将瓶子扔进PET瓶的专用垃圾箱。日本公司已經提高了制造PET瓶的原料中可回收用于生产新瓶的塑料所占的百分比。PET瓶可以在高温下溶解、过滤,生成一种可以再次制成新PET瓶的纯树脂。
未经此过滤处理的PET瓶也可以用于制造其他东西。可以用回收的PET瓶制造一种纤维,然后制成衣服、袋子、地毯和狗狗雨衣等。
用垃圾堆填造陆!
日本还有另一种办法来解决垃圾问题。如果没有足够的陆地来填埋垃圾,为什么不直接利用垃圾来增加陆地呢?如果看过阿联酋在迪拜海岸建造的棕榈岛的照片,那对填海造陆可能并不陌生(这也叫陆地堆填[land fill],可不是垃圾填埋[landfill],千万别搞混了)。其实日本也使用了这种技术,用沉重的岩石、水泥、泥土和垃圾填满一片水域,形成新的陆地,不过形状没那么漂亮。名古屋附近的中部国际机场和关西国际机场都建在人工岛上。在东京,地价是天文数字,东京湾已通过填海造陆开辟了249平方公里(96平方英里)的土地。
你的那个旧饭团包装袋很可能会在流化床中焚化,但也有可能成为日本最新岛屿的一部分哦。