This Japanese Town Sorts Their Waste Into These 45 Categories | Hacker News Reader

This Japanese Town Sorts Their Waste Into These 45 Categories

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25 pointsthunderbong22 comments

Efficient waste management is probably one of the hardest classification and allocation problems (the domain of data is "pretty much everything and everyone"). Every day we throw away tons of useful items and materials, because it is not economical to find an appropriate home for them. I wonder if the future "landfill" could be a robotic factory that attempts to solve this problem.

My local recycling center has most of these categories too.

The real difference seems to be that they have no main trash/recycling pickup in this town, as they're striving to be world leaders in recycled percentage.

Most places Japan is 3 categories: burn, non-burn, & recycle (PET, metal, glass). I’ve heard many stories of people in Japan harassing and shaming neighbors who fail to strictly follow these rules.

I wonder how much gas they burn getting all that stuff there. Seems more like a recycling fetish than anything worthwhile.

Fair point, but on the other hand I wonder how much stuff is reduced or reused - which are supposed to come before recycling - if residents feel the real cost of disposing of all this stuff.

How much gas is burned transporting your refuse to the landfill?

considering that its all put in one big truck I'd assume its much more efficient than hundreds of cars and probably multiple trip for each

IF you say so.

It still feels like you're focusing on the consequences of their methods without considering the consequences of yours.

The alternative is landfills which Japan does not have the space for.

And, things tend to get easier over time. Technique and technology may develop to make things go smoother.

The reuse aspect of it is also (discussed in the auricle). I have seen lots of stuff brand new in packaging or tags still on them thrown in the garbage. Getting that stuff to people that want it is good. A lot of things that still have a lot of life left are thrown in the garbage. Even broken things can be for "parts or repair".

And landfills, although useful, are just paying to store junk forever.

The alternative is a more rational approach to recycling (automation-heavy sorting with a focus on metals and glass) combined with waste-to-energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy

If you read the article most of the categories end up being burned as fuel.

Japan burns a lot of trash. I just hope that they're filtering out whatever garbage would otherwise end up in the air after burning it all. If they don't they're just shifting the problem from trash piles on their land to air pollution which becomes everyone's problem. At one point 30% of the air pollution in California could be traced back to China.

The space needed for landfills is negligible. Any country with room for farming has room for landfills.

>Any country with room for farming has room for landfills.

Japan does not have enough room for farming. Practically the entire countryside is dotted with farms and they still have to import over half of their food.

"Japan has a severe shortage of arable land, covering only 11% of Japan’s total territory. The country’s self-sufficiency rate currently stands at 39%."

https://www.eu-japan.eu/eubusinessinjapan/sectors/agroindust...

For comparison, the US's self-sufficiency rate is well over 100%. Some "bread basket" nations like Ukraine, Argentina, and Australia have self-sufficiency rates over 200%.

How much is that for meat and feed?

Not enough to make a difference.

There’s a reason Japanese beef is the most expensive in the world.

So if it isn't to save land, why does Japan go through the effort to burn or recycle most of it's trash? Altruism?

> why does Japan go through the effort to burn or recycle most of it's trash? Altruism?

Responsibility? Sanity?

The real question is why do other countries just push the problem of their trash onto other poorer countries or destroy their own land with toxic trash heaps. Even if you have plenty of space to fill with garbage why wouldn't you want to keep it clean/unpolluted? No matter how much square footage my house has, I'm still going to put my trash in a bin and take it outside instead of throwing it on the carpet and sweeping it into a corner.

Even if you have the land to spare, burning (with energy recovery) and recycling are better on various environmental and economic axis.

Then why doesn't every country do it?

people have a hard time conceptualizing the real size of volume

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