Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Recycing
No one recycles like the Japanese. On this day alone, one of three or four regular recycling days, there are the following categories
1) clear class bottles
2) brown glass bottles
3) green glass bottles
4) bottles of indeterminate colour
5) cans
The gentleman standing in the foreground listening to a walkman, is one of the local residents who is acting as the supervisor to advise the unwashed on how to separate their rubbish and to make sure that people do it properly. Residents police themselves.
The city includes the regulation that all cans and bottles be washed before they are put out for recycling. I think that the energy required to pull the water up from our well to wash the aluminium can may invalidate the recycling. Already recycling is subsidised. But I think that the act of separating and recycling ones rubbish encourages an awareness of the waste inherent in consumption that has an impact beyond the value of the can or bottle being put into the separate crates.
1) clear class bottles
2) brown glass bottles
3) green glass bottles
4) bottles of indeterminate colour
5) cans
The gentleman standing in the foreground listening to a walkman, is one of the local residents who is acting as the supervisor to advise the unwashed on how to separate their rubbish and to make sure that people do it properly. Residents police themselves.
The city includes the regulation that all cans and bottles be washed before they are put out for recycling. I think that the energy required to pull the water up from our well to wash the aluminium can may invalidate the recycling. Already recycling is subsidised. But I think that the act of separating and recycling ones rubbish encourages an awareness of the waste inherent in consumption that has an impact beyond the value of the can or bottle being put into the separate crates.
Labels: japan, japanese culture, nihonbunka, 日本文化
This blog represents the opinions of the author, Timothy Takemoto, and not the opinions of his employer.