Aeon has been selling in the neighborhood of 170 million plastic bags a year to their shoppers. The price paid for used PET bottles rose 2.6-fold in the mid and late 2000s due to demand from Chinese companies for plastic materials. The recyclable resins they contain can be used in the production artificial fibers and plastic and demand for them has risen as the price of oil soared. The Japanese are also known for throwing out electronic items that still work and furniture that is still in good condition. A whole industry has grown up around claiming items that are regarded as valuable. Many of the items end up in foreign countries and many of the people who collect them are also foreigners, who sometimes ferry out work to homeless people.
If this interests you, then please check with your city office for more information. This section can be the most stressful to get rid of as it normally requires a lot of steps, but don’t stress we are going to cover easy ways to dispose of these items in the next section. This is where things start to get a bit fuzzy, but let me clarify for you.



Few of Tokyo’s 23 wards have a recycling plant such as Minato; most rely on private companies to process recyclables. In addition, the type of recyclable material varies by ward — Minato gathers plastic containers for recycling but Setagaya Ward, Tokyo’s most populous, does not. Recycling companies are just one of many players in the recycling game that also includes individuals who illicitly gather recyclables from plastic boxes put out by wards. One such collector operating in Setagaya, shouldering an enormous bag of scavenged aluminum cans, said he gets ¥130 per kilogram. In evaluating the effect of the program, we should consider the reduction in the amount of hazardous metals in these appliances entering into the final disposal sites and municipal treatment facilities.
The major classifications are burnable (燃える/ 燃やす/ 可燃 ごみ) and non-burnable garbage (燃えない/ 燃やさない/ 不燃ごみ). The fewer categories a municipality employs the wider the scope of burnable garbage, non-burnable garbage however, by nature of the breadth of the term, is always more complex. Finally we have a special category for garbage that is too big, called oversized garbage or sodai gomi (粗大ゴミ) in Japanese. This is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult for foreigners living in Japan.
Once collected by municipalities, the end-of-life small home appliances are delivered to the authorized business operators for intermediate processing and metal recovery. On June 28, 2013, the national government authorized 14 business operators so that their collection areas will cover 事業所ゴミ 41 prefectures. On the same day, the results of a questionnaire survey targeting municipalities was published. It showed that 1,305 municipalities (covering about 90% of Japan's total population) already participated or planned to participate in this resource recovery program.

By contrast, the world production of platinum, mostly from Russia and South Africa, is only 100 tons. Japan is one of the first countries to get into recyclable and biodegradable plastics in a big way. PET bottles are collected are turned into high-quality polyester or new bottles. Asahi Breweries has dressed some of its employees in uniforms made from recycled plastic bottles. If you are disposing of combustibles, non-combustibles, recyclable products, and clear plastic bottles follow the guidelines in the last section and place them at the garbage collection point on its designated day.
The implementation of the Receptacle Packaging Recycle Law in April 1997 placed the responsibility for recycling polyethylene terephthalate bottles, glass bottles, and paper and plastic packaging on the manufacturer. These receptacles comprise percent of the total weight of general waste matter discarded by households, but, because of their bulk, they occupy 60 percent of the total volume. This law is based on dividing the cost of garbage disposal among companies, consumers, and municipalities, as compared to when disposal costs were formerly covered by taxes. When consumers discard a receptacle, they are required to presort it for the designated municipality pick-up areas, where it is collected for recycling by the manufacturers. Suntory said it wants to establish a new resource recycling system together with consumers, and plans to use 100 percent recycled materials in order to cut its CO2 emissions by at least 60 percent.

The BHET goes through a melt and solid phase polymerization process that produces PET flakes that can then be turned into new PET bottles or higher value-added products such as anti-corrosive PET film for aluminum drink cans made by Toyo Seikan. In 2016, the company’s technical prowess won a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Award for Resources Recirculation Technologies and Systems. Showa Denko’s heat gasification process is a form of chemical recycling, which breaks down materials into their constituent parts. Derived from petroleum, plastic is a compound made up of carbon and hydrogen in long molecular chains known as polymers.
In some places, Japanese deposit their household trash and garbage in clear plastic bags with a tag with their name on it. The purpose of this is to humiliate people who place recyclable cans, bottles or newspapers in clear bag, which everyone who passes by can see. In most places cans, bottles and newspapers are each placed in separate containers and picked up twice a month. Newspapers are also picked up by independent trash collectors who drive around in trucks and sometimes trade stacks of old newspaper for toilet paper.

Food recyclers tend to use leftovers from convenience stores and restaurants, where strict health laws require food to be thrown after one day. Food from households is not used because the food is often in bad condition. The government is trying to encourage retailers and restaurants — which produce 11 million metric tons a of food waste a year and often pay hefty fees to have food waster hailed away — to work close with feed-recycling companies.
On top of corporate responsibility, Neuhauss also believes in the power consumers have to create change. She points out that many Japanese shops take customer reviews into consideration, so she encourages people to write reviews urging shops to change their plastic usage problems. Nue by Totoya is one of the most dedicated zerowaste stores that sells organic dried foods such as nuts, dried fruits, pasta, as well as olive oil, honey and wines. Can rent a bento box from MUJI stores in Kamakura and Ginza and return it to the stores, but she wonders how scaleable these projects are. Therefore, she believes that accessibility is also an important factor in achieving more sustainability, and hopes that Japanese companies can take a larger responsibility in recycling. Smart Visions Logistics , Glen had been working for financial companies like MUFJ and Goldman Sachs.
Large amounts of foreign garbage mostly from China, Taiwan and South Korea, wash up on Japan’s shores on the Sea of Japan. The garbage includes pet bottles, cans, plastic bags, buoys and others stuff. Garbage from China increased 13-fold between the late 1990s and the late 2000s. On recent walk on a beach on the Sea of Japan most of what I saw, judging from the labels, was from Japan. What days certain items are being picked up, as well as where you should leave your recycling. Each area has its own standard, so ensure that you are familiar with these.