It is garbage day and the house is a mess. Plastic wrappers in all shapes and sizes spill out from plastic bags, plotting their escape. Beside the door leans stacks of cardboard boxes, flattened out of their boxy shapes, neatly tied together with a cord of white paper rope. Some old clothes are tossed haphazardly into a plastic shopping basket. As I gingerly step around the minefield to get into the ofuro, I survey the new living room landscape. I hope someone remembered to put the coffee on. I live in the village of Kamikatsu in Tokushima prefecture. With a population of around 1,500 residents, we are the smallest village on all of Shikoku island. But don’t let size fool you. Kamikatsu is a little village with a big reputation—not just big in Japan but beyond her borders too. Back in 2003, Kamikatsu became the first municipality in Japan to declare for Zero Waste, a goal they had hoped to reach by 2020. Although falling just short, Kamikatsu’s Zero-Waste initiative still sees the village recycle up to 81% annually of their total waste, compared to a national average of only 20%. What is Zero Waste in Kamikatsu? In practice, it translates into the scene demonstrated regularly by my living room. We don’t have a garbage collection service here. All the residents, instead, will clean, then sort (some conscientiously, others more broadly) the waste they generate at home, before bringing it in themselves to the Hibigatani Waste and Resource Station, known simply as the gomi station. At the gomi station is where the fun begins. Currently, at the gomi station we have forty-five different categories of separation, into which each resident will proceed to sort through their own household waste. Contrary to popular belief, this is not nearly as complicated as it may seem. Sure, fortyfive categories is a lot, but some of these categories include used tires, bedding or mattresses, and waste oil, things the average person will not find themselves throwing away on a regular basis. What you will find is people most often sorting their waste into the same few categories: plastic (dirty plastic packaging, clean plastic packaging, PET bottles, styrofoam etc.) paper (cardboard, newspapers or fliers, milk cartons etc.)
56
