Kamikatsu: is it easy to live in a Japanese city where all residents are required to sort waste

While the entire civilized world is introducing the practice of sorting waste into 5 or at best 10 categories, residents of the Japanese town of Kamikatsu are required to sort all the garbage generated in their homes into 45 categories. This city practically does not produce any waste, and certainly in its vicinity you will not see terrible landfills for household garbage. Kamikatsu is a role model for the whole world, because today already 80% of the garbage produced is completely recycled here, and in the near future this figure should reach 100%.

The population of the town is small - only 1,5 thousand people. Perhaps this explains the fact that the city was able to establish a fairly sophisticated system for sorting and collecting waste, in which every resident of Kamikatsu is involved. The Japanese living here collect separately not only paper, glass or plastic, but also all the other waste generated in their homes. Plastic and polyethylene containers are washed, dried and stacked in different containers, depending on their category, in order to facilitate their further processing.

There are no usual garbage containers near houses, since all residents sort and temporarily store house waste. By the way, residents take garbage to the garbage processing plant themselves. On a small town scale, this is not a big problem, but it significantly saves the cost of processing waste. The same 20%, which are not yet sorted, are sent for incineration, since it is this method of disposal that is recognized as the most environmentally friendly in Japan. In addition, a store operates in an unusual town, where any resident can bring a thing that he does not need, which can still be used. You can take any item from this store for free.

The city hopes to reach the 100% recycled waste indicator by 2020, and this seems quite real. Of course, when the city authorities only introduced a new waste sorting system in the early 2000s, it was not approved by all residents of Kamikatsu. But over time, people were inspired by the idea of the city’s waste-free functioning, and today almost 300 tons of garbage generated annually as a result of the town’s life is used a second time and does not harm the environment.