Garbage Seperation in Japan

i wished singapore would do the same too. but den again.. looking at our own culture. i doubt it'll ever happen. =( so much things to learn frm the japanese.

Wished they recycled in Malaysia as well. But i am in Australia and try my best to recycle! But sometimes, u should see what kind of garbage you can find in a bag. When its sealed, its meant to be sealed! Openning would result in giving birth to some sort of blob creature mutation!

If they find an address in the bag (from an envelope etc), then they will leave it at the address.

Oh, wow, I didn't know you have to remove the labels and cap and then rinse the inside with water... I do usually separate the cans/bottles and other burnable stuffs but I did not know I had to clean up the bottles like that >_< In that sense, in USA, it is lot easier since you just mash everything into one trash bag...

They have recycleable trash dumpsters on base but no one really seperates their trash. The non-burnable side is really "the side we throw garbage in when the burnable side is full ^^;". I've only heard of one instance where the Japanese complained that they had to seperate the entire base's garbage in the 2 years I've been here. Maybe they gave up? Sigh....It makes life easier for everyone if people would just take a few moments to put trash in the right spot.

Sadly, garbage separation isn't practiced here. Though it would be nice if it was.

One Tong (Waste bin), all in... >,<

Hmmm... kinda? But pretty basic, like cardboard (shipping boxes from HLJ & HS) and plastic bottles and newspapers are recyclables, so a separate truck picks it up. There are yard clippings which include leafs and grass, etc. And generic garbage, which could easily consist of anything that's put in the bin. They're not very picky.

why does everyone think rubbish separation is a good idea? recycling is a good idea, but washing your rubbish first? not me. i live in the kobe area and we recycle, but we don't wash our rubbish or take of the wrappings of pet bottles. and the cans and pet bottles go together. this is a good and not too difficult way.
i went to the local dump, which is called "clean centre" in kobe and it seems they mix everything together anyway.
so what can you do...?

In my country, the rubbish is just free for all, never separate, the worst thing is, garbage alway fill with water/liquid, which is yucks...@.@'.
myself usually clean up the bottle before throw away at home. At outside will try to look for a recycle bin but throw without washing it.

We've got three bins for trash disposal here in Melbourne, Yellow bin lids for recycleable trash only, green bin lids (light green) for garden trash (grass, plants, trees and sticks, etc) and normal bins (which are also green but a darker shade) which are for all other trash.

Bruneians need to practice this garbage separation :l

Garbage separation isn't enforced here in Ireland, but we do have two types of collection: recyclable and non-recyclable, and the non-recycleable is charged based on weight, so to save yourself money you want to put anything that is recyclable into the recyclable bin (which will not get picked up if non-recyclable content is found within).

Which I think is a pretty decent system.

My country is in the middle of promoting such method yet the denizens themselves don't want to take part since they see it as time consuming.

Where i lived previously in southern Wisconsin, the garbage people would pick up anything and any amount. You could put out anything and they would take it, even things that would be considered bad like paint and tvs. I moved two hours north, and the garbage is stricter, with only a certain amount able to put out (what fits in can, if there is more they leave it) and stricter recycling. The nice thing is there are recycling dumpsters downtown that we can take stuff to. Don't have to clean or anything like that, and it's a lot of different types all mixed in (containers doesn't matter if it's metal, plastic or glass).

The person who comes up with a way to break down garbage into it's elements or compounds will change the world.

recycle,green,garbage !!! >_<

Argh, why can Japanese participate in such nice and meaningful activity, while Indonesia can't!? Wish my culture was better at things like this....

I try to recycle but the UK doesn't enforce it so when I visit friends, they just dump the rubbish into one bin.

We seperate here. General foody-type rubbish goes in a big green wheelie bin, paper/card/cans/plastic goes in a blue box, and garden-y stuff goes in a brown wheelie bin.
I think it started getting enforced here quite a few years ago. At first it was a little annoying to sort and clean things, but now I don't even really realise that I do it.
The only bad thing are the frequencies of pickups. One Tuesday is food rubbish only, then the next Tuesday is recyclable rubbish only, so things start to build up. So much so that our we have to use two boxes and a wheelie bin for the recyclable rubbish instead of just one box, and we have to keep the food wheelie bin down the garden to keep the rotting food away ^^;

Not in Indonesia.. Guess my government knew that we're just too lazy to separate our garbage..

We have recycling bins here though they arent mandatory lots of people have been doing it recenty.They even have them in alot of theme parks around here.Though,I wish they had recycle bins at schools.With all the vending machines so much plastic and alumminum go to waste.Its a shame.

My town gives us two options for garbage disposal:
One option is to pay $2 per bag of unsorted trash (limit of 5) with free curbside pickup for recyclables.

The other option is to use private trash pickup (price and limits vary, mine is ~$70 every 3 months with a limit of 5 bags per week, but the bags are MUCH larger than the town bags). However, if you use private trash pickup, the town won't pick up recyclables curbside, they have to be brought to the recycling center.

I want my government start thinking of garbage separation. God knows we need it.

I wished they had that here in my country. It'll teach the populace the meaning of cleanliness.

gotta seperate stuff here round Toronto, but not to this extent. We have recycling, but that all goes into one blue bin, and the ppl picking it up seperates it when they throw it into the truck (it's got seperate sections on the truck's container or something). and we also have the green bin, that's all composte or "raw garbage" according to the video. green bin and recycling is once every week, but garbage (everything not green bin or recycling) goes out once ever 2 weeks.

In some areas the green bin requires special composte bags you gotta buy, in my area thankfully we can use regular plastic bags. those special composte bags are really thin and rip easily, very bad, not to mention kinda expensive.

Bloody brilliant! This needs to be adopted everywhere :-D

No Seperation rules here really. But I do try to keep the burnables and the metal away from eachother. But in some instances that isn't the case. Alot of countries should start the seperating of Garbage and Burnables. Gotta get used to it so when I get to Japan it is second nature.

Throw it all in one bag , let them sort it out! Honestly thats how jobs are made.

flash news: not all parts of japan like that! in osaka where i'm living now, people don't separate their garbage. well, not all osaka like that though, in other parts of osaka we still need to separate the garbage.

Indeed...a lot of things to learn from them....

Where I live we just have three containers for trash, recycling, and compost. We don't have to do any more sorting than that.

Wow, Now thats separation XP
Here in mexico, just in some "fancy" places theres garbage separation(actually in 2 parts, Green garbage and Recyclable waste).
Hmm, I need to go to Japan!!!

We recycle where I live but it's not like you have to. These days recycling is becoming more popular to do with the whole green movement and all.

Although we do have garbage separation in the Netherlands, it isn't as serious as sending it back when it's not separated correctly. At least, little stuff like caps and labels can stay on the bottles. I don't really know what happens when you put non-plastic garbage in those bags...Never got warned since I've done it correctly up until now, eh. Some months ago it wasn't a must, but now you can get a warning if you don't separate at all...

ps. The article has a typo in "Seperation", that has to be Separation.

Sweden here:
In my apartment complex we have the following bins in the basement: Unsorted garbage, newspapers, cardboard, metal (cans/tins), solid plastic, uncolored glass, colored glass. Most people sort their garbage.

Where my parents lived in a house, they had a similar arrangement of 3 wheelie bins each split in the middle. The enforcement there simply worked by the fact that the side for unsorted garbage was too small to fit a households whole garbage so you'd have to sort your stuff or you wouldn't get rid of it.

Get fined if you get caught not recycling properly here, once4 you start to do you rubbish reduces massively so you dont have to sort it out.

Wow I'm very surprised they will take it back to the address or leave a note (that isn't a ticket^^)

Here in the US, we just dump everything in the same trash can. It's so disgusting! I at least separate my recyclable cans and bottles. I don't think any trashman here would want to open anyone's trash bag, unless they really enjoy vomiting.

Recycling is all by choice here in the states. Sometimes though I wish we would implement some sort of mandatory recycling system.

We don't have to separate recyclables don't have to be separate where I live, they do that at the plant. So you can throw away paper with plastic and metal. They do however require you use a trash bin otherwise they will ticket/fine you if they find an address in the trash bag.

Everything is dumped in a bag in Singapore.

Wow, hardcore. Over here they'd take it anyways, but then again recycling isn't as strict as in Japan ^^;. Would be good though because sometimes I think people could use some education on how to deal with their trash....

Yeah, our recycling guys don't take anything if we don't follow the rules, like putting glass in the blue container, plastic in plastic bags, milk cartons need to be rinsed and compact...

No need, homeless people will go through my dumpster and remove anything recyclable.

I don't see the point of washing off burnables when they're going to be burned. Especially if you just mix food waste in with the burnables anyway because the food wast just gets all over them. >>;

Seeing this makes me wonder if us foreigners made it hell for the people at the hostel we stayed at when it came to trash day. A lot of us weren't sure how to separate it, so we just guessed a lot of the time. Maybe it wasn't as strict for their trash collection.

Ever since I visited a friend's parent's home in Japan I have been at awe and even admire how careful all the recyclables are separated. I'm sure not everyone likes this but I still find it incredible. I couldn't believe even plastic wrappers were recycled. In NY the only things we recycle are paper, cans, glass and most types of plastic bottles. It's not enforced though and some people could careless.

Wish that was practiced here...would make things nicer...

We only recycle newspaper often in our neighborhoods . A big old truck will call out " All newspaper , Sau Tau Toji , All News Paper , Paper Lama" on the roads of our neighborhood . We just sell them our newspapers and got little money for it . At least We are saving the environment for it .

Wait, you can burn your plastic bags? Wow, in the States, that would get you in trouble. (Well, without about $4,000 in filters.) We have recycling here, mostly hard plastics, glass, and metal. However, only a few folks do it, because it is a bit of a hassle. They want all glass items washed and labels removed. Of course, we have deposits on pop cans/bottles, so you have to pay those, but you get it back when you take the cans in.

Look at that Texas (my home state,) doesn’t that look like a good idea? I wish America would get with the program and start on the GREEN road with these small steps of proper recycling. Though maybe I shouldn’t complain and start doing that myself, tehe.

segregation is good for nature and people. here in our country we already have this law about rubbish but it seems like no one take this seriously, that's why after a strong typhoon most drainage were clogged and cause flood and took hundreds of human lives. you don't need to go to school just to learn how to manage your trash, even dog and cat know where to place their poo.

Oops! Was not aware that the labels and caps were burnable trash~ oh well.
But anyway, in the States, everything unfortunately goes all into one smelly bag. Unless recycling is offered in the area, where the smelly recyclables go in their own smelly bags/bins. No rinsing required. And that's assuming people actually take advantage of the recycling services.

Garbage separation? Lol, they just throw it all into the garbage truck over here.

It would be nice if USA had some kind of recycling/garbage disposal laws encouraged in the community. There are places to recycle plastic bottles, cans and glass but 9 out of 10 won't even bother. I'm not saying go all out like Japan, but even a quarter of what they do would help immensely to reduce garbage.

In my neck of the woods, each household is given two garbage cans from the City of San Diego: a black one for regular trash (picked up once a week) and a blue one for recyclables (picked up every other week). Papers, plastics and cans goes in the blue and everything else goes into the black one. It'd be really nice to have a trash separation system like Japan over here...

Coming from the US, all the garbage separation is a rather annoying thing to do. But it's not so bad once you get used to it. Japan is a really clean country because such a system is in place. Like everyone else has been saying, it'd be nice if the US did this too.

In Czech Republic, we have separate trashcans for glass, paper, plastic, and multi-layer packages. And the rest, mixed rubbish, of course. Some people manage their trash, some don't. I and my family do.

how did you manage to separate the dry garbage with wet garbage like food residue?
in my place, people mix up all the garbage... even the recycle campaign failed..

Danny if you stay in my country and say: Recicle. The people laughs of you... >_>U

My university has hundreds of Paper, Plastic Bottles, and Aluminum Can recycle bags all over the place. And they're always full by the end of the day, so seems that we're recycling quite a bit on campus. Typically in the United States, you have regular trash, and two bins for recyclables. Those bins are for papers and cardboards, and the other is for glass, plastics, and metals. I think the system works decently, it's not very hard and certainly isn't needlessly complicated like Japan's.

wonder why they dont recycle their plastic bags. businesses here are always quite happy to get bags from any store to reduce the cost of making more.

as for regular trash.. they gave up here and try to filter out plastic aluminum and magnetic metal to pay or make money off of it.

Germany is garbage seperation territory.

oh my God!!!!!...now i realize that i'm still a PIG XD
...i do separate garbage, but just raw garbage in one bag
and all the plastic bottles, cans, paper, carton, etc.
in another bag....old clothes and things like that in
another....

by the way...isn't supposed that plastic bags are going to be avoided in all the world?

Japan is such a developed country it's incredible, here sometimes we swim across a sea of garbage @_@.

Northern Ireland has recycling, but not full separation as all the recyclables go together and as do all the 'waste' things. Lovely to see how dedicated Japan is.

Yellow bin = Recycle (paper, metal, grass, anything really)
Green bin = Everything else

Wow, Now thats separation XP
Here in mexico, just in some "fancy" places theres garbage separation(actually in 2 parts, Green garbage and Recyclable waste).
Hmm, I need to go to Japan!!! well again =P