Japan is often viewed as an "over-industrialized" country that doesn't value its natural environment enough, an image that Prime Minister Hatoyama is hoping to change as he meets with President Obama this weekend. While it's true the country can be somewhat rough on its natural resources, damming 98% of its rivers and actually encasing mountainsides in concrete on the off chance that there might be a landslide someday, there are other areas where Japan is surprisingly green. Dozens of household products are sold in full-sized bottles as well as inexpensive refill packs, so you can keep using the same bottle again and again. Gomi (trash) is meticulously separated in to different types, including "burnable," plastic, steel and aluminum cans, PET bottles, and glass, to encourage meaningful recycling. Japan is generally more energy efficient, too, thanks to the custom of only heating the room you're currently using rather than the whole house, and there's an entire class of smaller fuel-efficient "K" cars that come with tax benefits for owners. Recently my home prefecture of Gunma has come up with an innovative new way to get people to think about the environment, by creating a kawaii super-hero version of Gunma-chan, the official prefectural horse mascot. It's certainly designed to appeal to Japanese consumers.
There's a new super hero fighting for the environment in our prefecture.
3 comments:
Of course, Hatoyama-shushou's electioneering statement of reducing road tolls wouldn't be very green...
The sad truth about "burnable" trash in Japan is that they also consider certain kinds of industrial waste (such as materials from torn-down buildings) to be burnable, and so areas like Tokorozawa (Totoro's once-pristine forest home) where scores of trash incinerators are located, are now polluted with dioxin (an extremely toxic and stable molecule that doesn't break down in the environment). It's in the air, water and soil, and dioxin accumulates in body fat cells of humans and animals, especially aquatic life. Here is a short paper written by a resident of Tokorozawa:
http://www3.airnet.ne.jp/dioxin/English.html
They have even located some trash incinerator plants right next to schools. In that same paper, there is a link to a photo showing the school kids being engulfed by the smoke from the nearby incinerator. On the bottom of the paper, there are a couple links to other informative papers.
I'm not an environmental activist. I just accidentally happened to encounter this information one day when I simply wanted to learn more about Totoro's home. What a sad surprise it was to learn about the dioxin from the incinerators. They were even building incinerators scattered throughout the beautiful forests.
I just now did a quick Google search for "incinerator japan", and there is plenty to read about dioxin in Japan.
PeterD, yes, that's hilarious to reduce yet increase emissions. Kind of shows that all politics is scizo..
Deedubb, yes there was quite a bit of discussion over the dioxin issue over the years, which (who knows) may be a reason for the low birth rate, if Japanese men have lower sperm counts than they should. While Japan's system of burning trash, using the energy to generate electricity (a pool I go to is operated this way) then trapping (they say) 99% of the outgoing dioxin/other bad gasses seems cool and high-tech, it's probably not as good as it should be.
In general, when I got here it was common for people to burn their own garbage, and we used to do it at J-List. (It was nice to be able burn some of the ero ads we'd get from companies). These days though it's no longer legal.
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