Talking Trash

Since our visit to Odaiba, we’ve all been a little bit obsessed by trash. The idea that the island of Odaiba, and more like it in Tokyo Harbor and around the country, were built on landfill is mindboggling. But I suppose we shouldn’t be so surprised. The packaging in Japan is beautiful, but so elaborate that the amount of refuse it creates is staggering. Example: Daniel and I once bought a chocolate croissant to share at a very upscale bakery in a shopping mall. The sales clerk lovingly wrapped the pastry in tissue paper, placed it in a beautiful jaguar-print cardboard box, taped the box shut and then tied a ribbon around it, put the box in a bag, and then taped the bag shut. When we opened the box an hour or so later we also found a pamphlet about the bakery, and we saw that the sales clerk had also put a disposable cold pack in to keep the chocolate from melting, although it wasn’t particularly hot outside. All for one little pastry! Most bakeries in the States would have tossed it in a small paper bag and called it a day.

Every postcard we buy comes in its own clear plastic sleeve. When I bought some bagels out of curiosity at a place near our apartment, each bagel was also in its own plastic sleeve. When I bought a box of saltine crackers in the supermarket, inside the box the crackers were enclosed in wrapped packets of about 6 or 8 crackers each. We haven’t done a lot of non-food shopping here yet, but the gift packaging looks exquisite and excessive.

We thought that sorting trash (into combustible, non-combustible, cans and bottles, etc.) meant that trash was being recycled and maybe even reused, but no such luck. And we find ourselves accumulating an amazing amount of garbage which we often have to take out of the apartment earlier than the regular Monday and Thursday pickup days.

Tokyo is an extremely clean city, so evidence of all the garbage doesn’t confront you directly. But it’s there. I did some online research, and here’s some of the disturbing Japanese trash talk I found:

–Four million tons of household waste are dumped in Tokyo Bay each year. Almost 1300 acres of landfill have been created off the coast of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. At the current rate, the entire bay could disappear in decades. (Landfill is a combination of non-burnable refuse, ash from incinerators, and industrial waste.)

–Because of space constraints (meaning the landfills are almost full), Tokyo also burns a lot of trash, and has two-thirds of the world’s waste incinerators. There are more than 2000 municipal incinerators in operation around the country (compared to less than 200 in the entire U.S.)

–Japan emits 40 percent of the world’s dioxins, a byproduct of burnt plastic (linked to cancer and birth defects).

–Dioxin in fish from Tokyo Bay is now at 10 times the acceptable level, because of the toxic ash used in landfill.

–Half of the non-burnable waste from households is plastic. At one point there was a test program in which some residents of Tokyo were asked to put their plastic trash in with the combustible garbage. The government claimed that new incinerators operated at higher tempratures and didn’t produce much dioxin.

–One other factor getting in the way of Japan’s ecology is the economy’s reliance on the construction industry. I can’t remember the exact figures, but some very large percentage of jobs are in construction, and a large percentage of the national economy is wrapped up in it. What that means, though, is that new projects are created just to keep the machinery going. That means that now nearly all the rivers are dammed, the beaches covered in concrete.  

I guess because of things like hybrid car technology, the famed Japanese love of nature, and the Kyoto Protocol, I assumed that Japan would be a leader in environmental consciousness. But nothing could be further from the truth. Sure, there are some small initiatives. The government now has a “cool biz” campaign, urging Japan’s dark-suited workers to wear short-sleeved shirts and lighter-weight jackets in the summer to minimize the use of air-conditioning. And housewives are exhorted to carry “eco bags” to the grocery store so they don’t need dispoable plastic bags. But these seem like symbolic gestures. What we don’t see any evidence of is a move away from extreme overpackaging, or much emphasis on waste minimalization or even recycling.  Instead, it’s all about convenience, and about getting rid of the old to make way for the new . . . and piling up a lot of garbage in the process.