Trash

One of the first thing I, and probably other foreigners arriving in Japan as well, found fascinating was how the separation and handling of trash here seems to be an entire science. Even if trash in Sweden (where I come from) is also in  large extent separated, it is not done with the same carefulness  as here.

The way trash is handled, the garbage trucks you see in the streets of the neighborhood almost every time you set foot outside the seminar house, and the fact that Japan, even with the lack of trash bins, seems to be extremely clean, gave me the notion that Japan is like that, clean and without littering. The strict regulations is also something that strikes me as different, during the orientation at Kansai Gaidai we were told that since the trash has to be packed in transparent bags, it will be noticed if the trash is not separated correctly, and if that is the case, the bag will not be picked up by the garbage trucks. We also learned that incorrect sorting of garbage is one of the main reasons for tension between neighbors in Japan.

The other day I took a long walk with my camera towards the small mountain range south of the University and I ended up walking along not too heavy trafficked road running along a small river. Along this road I found dumped trash in all forms and sizes.
I found bicycles, motorbikes, kitchen appliances, a creepy-looking heap of toys, and pretty much everything imaginable in the ditches and clusters of vegetation close to the road.

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Smashed TV.

The reason for at least many of this things being dumped like this is probably the Japanese recycling law, which means that consumers have to bring their used products to certain take-back sites and pay collection and recycling fees to the retailers who on their part has the responsibility to recycle these objects. Since there are fees for these services, some people might just find it a better idea to dump their garbage in a place they figure they will not be caught.

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One of several motorbikes I found on my walk.

When I did my research for this post, I came upon this article about a very creative way to make people think a second time before the throw their things out in the nature, an interesting idea but not a solution to the problem.