Almost All Municipalities to Start Sorted Collection of Packaging Waste

Almost all Japanese municipalities have formulated their five-year plans for sorted collection programs under the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law, the Ministry of the Environment announced on September 29, 2005. In all, 2,415 of the 2,418 municipalities in Japan are expected to implement the sorted collection of one or more kinds of containers and packaging waste specified by the law during the five-year period starting in fiscal 2006.

In regard to plastic bottles, which have been subject to sorted collection and recycling since fiscal 1997, the number of municipalities which plan to implement the sorted collection has been increasing steadily. The estimated volume of collected plastic bottles is expected to increase by 21 percent to 345,000 tons in fiscal 2010 from 285,000 tons in fiscal 2006.

Meanwhile, separate collection of plastic packaging and paper packaging, which started in fiscal 2000, is also expected to keep increasing for another five years. The volume of plastic packaging collected is expected to increase from 724,000 tons in fiscal 2006 to 1,011,000 tons in fiscal 2010, up 40 percent, and that of paper packaging from 155,000 to 199,000 tons, up 28 percent.

http://www.env.go.jp/en/

Posted: 2006/01/02 02:07:28 PM
Japanese version