Recycling!

Back to a lifestyle post. I touched upon this briefly with in my post about safety way back in February, but I think it deserves a post of it's own. I love recycling, I think it's a great idea as for both environmental sustainability and progeny's sake...and it makes me feel very virtuous for doing a very simple thing. When I realized that Japan also promotes recycling, I was very excited. Japan doesn't just recycle though, Japan recycles like crazy.

Let's start with the basics: You're going to need to start with three different colored bags which unfortunately change from city to city. Here in Kariya the colors are as follows. Green for combustibles, yellow for papers, and red for plastic. Green is your normal trash - banana peels, tea leaves, egg shells, etc. Then comes the exciting part. 

The two basic levels of recycling categorization are plastics and paper, pink and yellow respectively in Kariya. Every bottle of juice, every tray of vegetables, every carton of takeout has a symbol on it showing which category it falls into. Be careful though sometimes the tray might be a paper, while the lid might be a plastic. Give it a quick rinse and into the bag it goes. In Kariya, combustibles are picked up twice a week, plastics once a week, and papers bi-weekly.

Recycling Labels!
graphic from webbdevlam.com

The more advanced level of the bagged recycling collection system is the return bag. For some of recycling categories the waste collection company needs to take the sack back to their sort facility and then they return them to you. As such, each family has their name and apartment building written on the sack so they get their own bag back.

PET bottles are particularly tricky. PET bottles don't go into the normal plastic recycling, which is caution number one. You're either going to need a collection sack or just drop them off one by one at the nearest convi or vending machine garbage bin. Many convis discourage disposal of household recycling at their facilities so you have to be a bit discreet about that one. There is a thin perforation line to take the wrapper off of the bottles which goes into the normal plastics bag.

There are some recyclable items which are solely collected at third party facilities, like some convis or grocery stores. One example of these is milk cartons. I usually take the cartons that have accumulated over the past month to the Apita grocery store to dispose of them. Make note of the proper unfolding procedure! 

So there you have it, basic recycling etiquette in Japan. It takes a few weeks to get into the groove of it, but once you've got it down, it's such an effective system that you have a tough time not following it!