Politics in Japan

“Mottainai” Have you ever heard this word? This is a Japanese word which means waste, (specifically, it is the word that shows people's lamenting feeling when they can't use the most of worth of something) and this word is becoming worldwide now. One Kenyan person whose name is Wangari Maathai actively work by spreading this word to the world. Just putting some rubbish into the dust box is “Mottainai”! Japanese government, specifically, Ministry of the Environment works hard about our environment. I’d like to focus on recycling in Japan today.

In Japan, we have to separate rubbish according to the type of rubbish. For example, we separate rubbish into combustible, not combustible, bulky refuse, and can and bottle. The rule of throwing away something depends on the region, and some area has a strict rule such as Kyoto prefecture.

Recycling Box
The rubbish are divided into can, carton packs, plastic bottles, and other plastic materials.

Recycling becomes popular today. Most supermarkets have recycling boxes like this picture. My family often brings cartons of milk and plastic bottles when we go to supermarkets and also give newspapers to our local community. When we bring cartons of milk, we often cut and open the carton.

We also separate plastic bottles into cap and bottle when we put them into the recycling box. After we put plastic bottles into the recycling box, autonomy collect them, and they reborn into fabric, sheet such as files, new bottles and pens. According to the statistics done by the council for PET bottle recycling, the rate of collecting plastic bottles is 69% in 2007. If we recycle plastic bottles or cans, we can save the energy to burn them and prevent to emit CO2. If we save 1.5 litters plastic bottle, you can prevent to emit 87 gram of CO2!
Cartons of milk will also reborn into toilet papers, tissues and uchiwa( a Japanese fan). If we recycle 6 piece of cartons of milk, we can make 1 toilet paper from them. Today, about 65600 tons of carton of milk are collected in a year.

If we recycle these rubbish and reuse them, we can save a lot of energy and resources. Today, we live in the mass production and mass consumption society, so I think our tiny effort to the environment in daily life is very important.


Mottainai
http://www.mottainai.info/english/

The council for recycling PET bottle
http://www.petbottle-rec.gr.jp/english/index.html


(This site incldes statistics I mentioned on this post)