Yokohama City to Produce Compost from Animal Wastes

Yokohama City announced a new project to promote environmental education by creating a system to compost animal excrement from the city zoo and sell it to citizens and farmers. This project is to be conducted as a 2005 Entrepreneurship Project. Under this scheme civic employees propose projects that would benefit citizens and take all responsibility, from planning to operations.

Preliminary studies confirmed the demand for manure compost. About sixty percent of visitors of the zoo welcomed the project, with comments like "It would be a good souvenir of the zoo," and "It sounds like it would be good for the environment." At farmers' gatherings as well, the answers were mostly positive; for example, "I hope I can use the compost soon," "I would like to buy manure compost," and "I would like to use the compost for my fields."

In addition to being helpful in environmental education and effective use of resources, this project is expected to reduce the disposal costs of animal excrement. In fiscal 2005, Yokohama City incinerated about six hundred tons of animal wastes generated annually at the city zoo, at an annual cost of about 10 million yen (about U.S.$87,000). With the reduction in disposal costs and the new sales revenue, this project is expected to be profitable within five years after the completion of the facility, even after counting construction costs.

Since the construction cost of the composting plant is high, at 45 million yen (about $391,300), the project will start with a smaller plant to compost the wastes gathered only one day per week. Then, after testing the sales promotion strategy, quality of compost, and branding strategy, a full-scale plant will be constructed by fiscal 2008 to compost all animal excrement from the zoo.


http://www.city.yokohama.jp/en/

Posted: 2006/10/06 12:25:48 PM
Japanese version