Current State and Trend of Waste and Recycling in Japan

Takashi Amemiya

doi:10.15344/2456-351x/2018/155

Abstract

This report statistically introduces the current state and recent trends regarding resource circulation, industrial and municipal waste and recycling in Japan. Also recycling systems for home appliance waste and ELV (end of life vehicle) waste are discussed.

Highlights

In Japan, the social and industrial structure based on resourceconsuming economies with mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal continued until the early 1990s, when its economic growth began sharply to slow down and entered a period of stagnation
The domestic total of recirculated resources in Japan in 2014 FY accounted 261 Mt, and RRR, or Resource Recycle Rate, reached 16%, which almost doubled in the 20 years from 1994 FY. Such improvement of the RRR is not a simple result of the effort to progress recycling in the industrial and the municipal waste sectors, but rather it is due to the fact that the domestic resources total has been reduced by about 50% in relation to the shrinkage of infrastructure construction in Japan during this period
The final disposal amount has continued to decrease over a long period, and the actual result in 2014 FY has been reduced to 1% of the total input resource amount

Summary

Introduction

In Japan, the social and industrial structure based on resourceconsuming economies with mass production, mass consumption, and mass disposal continued until the early 1990s, when its economic growth began sharply to slow down and entered a period of stagnation. Annual statistics of concrete shipment volume have been reported whereby shipments of concrete have almost halved in the last 20 years [4], which means that the infrastructure construction in Japan continued to shrink during this period In this way, the drastic reduction of domestic mineral resource use caused a decrease in Japan’s total material input, resulting in an increase in the numerical calculation of RRR. The sum amount of recycling derived from municipal waste and industrial waste is 221 Mt, which corresponds to 50.6% of the total waste volume Breakdown of this recycling is; 134 Mt recycled as material, 67 Mt returned to farmland as animal manure, and 21 Mt used for land construction and soil amelioration. Since specific data on the amount of waste corresponding to these generated electricity is not published, the author estimated the waste input to the electric energy recovery as follows

Municipal waste

Industrial waste

Conclusion

Findings

Basic Act on Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society