Hiroshima - Ground Zero
Nestled imperceptibly in the cedar mountains covered road winding to the nearest metropolis an hour Kamikatsu seems an unlikely place for a revolution.
But try to throw even a candy wrapper away here, and it is quickly apparent that residents are trying to radically reshape their relationship with the environment.
It is a singularly focused on banishing city waste all waste by 2020 Kamikatsu people for 2000 distributed public garbage They implemented a Zero Waste Academy to act as monitor the discharge of the city has become a kind outdoor filing cabinet, embracing 34 categories of waste batteries for fluorescent lamps to the bottle caps.
Kamikatsu probably pushed the ethics of recycling since a worldwide community, but it is just a small indicator of a national campaign by Japan to position itself as leader in the urgent quest of the world to live more green .
The dynamics through a broad base of individual recycling in plant efficiency to trading in electronic waste.
There are just four years, this small island nation had become a cautionary tale for the environment, some of its cities synonymous with high costs for the health of the industrialization of rapid postwar.
But the forces that propelled Japan into economic superpowerdom efficient manufacturing and technological sophistication of these have also helped lay the foundation for a more energy efficient and less polluting company.
Last July, Japan hosted the G-8 and gave an environmental cast, boasting how manufacturers have undergone training for energy stinginess long after the oil shocks of the 1970s have given way to fuel cheap and SUVs 90s.
More recently, recycling efforts have burgeoned, as progress in reducing waste in everything from cars to copy and with cell phones and computers become obsolete fiber optic speeds, Japan is in the process of emerge as a leading contender in what is known as urban mining extraction safety every precious industrial metals recycling.
Japan was generally better than the United States internationally on a number of issues, including the reduction of electronic waste, recycling and energy efficiency, says Daniel Esty director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy at New Haven, Connecticut the region sees Japan technology leaders, and that we are moving closer to understanding the technological role in the environment of progress, Sá sense that Japan has much to share.
At the assembly plant Tsutsumi Toyota in Nagoya in Japan response to evidence of a Detroit auto industry more environmentally exposed before you even walk through a door What was once a vast expanse gray industrial power came to life literally.
50,000 Large trees were planted in May dot the visitor parking to offer a soothing greeting, says Director of Sustainable Initiative Insulating vines of the plant is making its way to the outside of a locker used building 22,000 square meters of ex-terieur walls are coated with photocatalytic paint, says Toyota, reflects the capacity of 2,000 poplar trees to absorb nitrogen oxide and oxygen in the process.
The roof of the visitor center is a grass mat, designed to reduce to 3 ° C heat waves Solar lights dotting the streets and 800 kilowatts of solar panels cover the building heights Even flowers roadside red have been genetically modified to absorb harmful emissions and help evaporate the water.
Behind the Tsutsumi of face lift is one of the most visible deals the globe to reduce the carbon footprint of the car Prius Hundreds rolling out sparkling line 2 here every day.
The hybrid vehicle friendly Earth icon from Tokyo to Hollywood, Toyota decided it was important to have a backstory match up.
Cars are a burden to the environment, but using the hybrid, said Osamu Terada, a leader of sustainable plant initiative The plant is also important that we do not want the production to cause an additional burden.
Like the Prius, the Tsutsumi factory now rests on hybrid power, drawing 50 percent of its electricity from solar panels and 50 percent of the capture waste heat generated in the plant The plant has reduced emissions carbon dioxide to half of what they were in 1990, despite an increase in production, it eliminated waste landfilled in 1999 and distributed waste incinerated in March.
Toyota is definitely a visible leader in this regard, says Esty and other automakers such as Honda and BMW are beginning to pay attention to environmental concerns in the cars they produce and their manufacturing process and the supply chain and even some US automakers are beginning to wake up to these issues.
It is an approach that has long characterized the Japanese companies Japanese companies came from a real hatred of waste, says founder John Elkington of SustainAbility, a consultancy global business and who went deep into their manufacturing philosophy.
A Dowa Eco-System Recycling Co Honjo, Japan, Yoshihiko Maeda pushes his hand in a huge plastic bag tall and guns across hundreds of cell phones used to it, it is time of opportunity.
Usually, a phone that weighs 100-130 grams 22 to 3 pounds, give 04 grams of gold, according to officials Dowa There is a small amount, but it is valuable to manufacturers in growing competition for resources and recyclers, that can extract and refine the same purity as the gold extracted.
Retrieving the content of everything from air conditioners to the circuit board has taken the increasing global emergency that manufacturing increased from developed countries to developing countries, which often lack the appropriate recycling facilities, but the extraction of materials is very profit, which means that companies compete to snap up the waste because it is often difficult to automate, dangerous practices can expose workers, including children in some parts of the world to hazardous materials.
After 2005, said Yasuhiko Hotta a waste management expert at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Kanagawa, Japan, the government shifted its focus to international efforts There s measures to prevent illegal trade of recyclable materials, including electronic waste, and to develop the capacity for proper treatment and recycling of waste in developing countries.
aggressive efforts on what he called the 3Rs reuse, recycle and reduce opened many opportunities to support similar strategies in Thailand Bangladesh Vietnam and Indonesia They improved recycling targets locally, although more efforts are underway to waste back to Japan Japan which requires highly sophisticated process.
Similarly, Dowa, which is considered a major global industrial recycling companies, a pilot project for the collection of electronic waste and material recovery in developing countries in Asia The company, which incorporates about 440 lbs 200 kg of gold per month, 18 can extract metals from 800 varieties of high and low technology waste rolling in this plant every month much is the cell phone detritus of everyday life, watches, cards PCB, even pens.
On the corporate campus, where low buildings style barracks feed a small central road, the waste is sorted as may be broken there and what needs to be delivered to a village scale plant Dowa in northern Japan once processed, extracted materials can be returned to manufacturers to create new watches and more advanced tools.
As a worker looks to take the gold recovered by amalgamation and drive it into a brick about 7 million yen, or about 76,000, M. Maeda said that the amount of gold and silver that has seen skyrocketed and that is a good thing.
Mines dig deep holes, and produces waste, he said a ton of land, for example, generally is obtained five grams of gold per ton of cell phones, meanwhile, contains 400 grams of gold and 500 grams of silver and 4 grams of palladium according Dowa.
Starting next year, the Japanese government will require telecommunications to recycle all cell phone companies We used to think that our resources were unlimited 40 years ago, but now we can feel limiting, so we recycle everything, says Maeda.
A lot of effort to go green in Japan are the individuals working consider Mayor Kamikatsu.
Kazuichi Kasamatsu grew up in the small town, watching the fall of the population by two-thirds and its economic prospects diminish Rice fields were replaced with cedar farms only to have the business leave the woods in search of hand -d'œuvre cheaper There was always the feeling that we could not do it, he said we had trouble understanding our future.
Passage of a waste management law in 1997 forced the closure of the incinerator of the city and led to a new sense of direction that has inspired near other rural areas in Japan and far rapidly growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Cities everywhere deal with the same question how to be sustainable, he says the Internet has boosted its meaning fellow citizens themselves as international players should watch and observe, exchange tips with their counterparts around the world, he also said that it was time to go against the tide gauge of wealth by accumulating more things we want to produce things that take into account what happens after s used if it can be recycled t in any way, you can t happen.
The city now has a recycling rate of 80 percent, against 55 percent 10 years ago, the national recycling rate of the United States is on average about 34 percent, with much higher cities The local hotel where tourists arrive by the bus load to dive in baths fed by hot springs mountain is heated with biomass burners, annually saving 7 million yen, or about 76,000, and reduce CO2 emissions .
The change is propagated to the minutiae of the lives of local merchants offer raffle tickets for empty cans and hold drawings for low prices People volunteer to collect illegally dumped materials and snatch everything passers by toss on the road.
Sonoe Fujii, head of Zero Waste Academy, said she sees more people eating with reusable chopsticks and carrying ecobags, including some made by local women from waste as the city prepares to host one of the finest conference Japanese villages, pensioners groups gather on the roadside to put in plants and do some weeding.
Perceptions are changing Garbage has a negative connotation, notes Ms. Fujii But when waste is landfilled in the city and can be recycled, it can have a new life People smile and talk trash They made a strong contribution .
She told people that if the policy benefits the environment, it also allows them to save money for investing more in education in the city, including The Observer flows from verifying the initiative garbage, she adds, bodes well for the future and as a young, she is happy to see at least a few people as she returned to the country, attracted by the prospect of a greener lifestyle of 'environment.
Fujii hope the recycling won t be so expensive in the future that manufacturers determine how to reduce waste and reuse materials over The next step has to come from the business, she says, at the moment is to achieve Kamikatsu its 2020 target and the prospect is energizing city residents of all ages.
This is evident from the back patio occupied Kikue Nii A table carefully before potted plants share floor space with plastic bags washed chimes that float like a sock hanger next to a tank of crabs' fresh water, it draws in the local river, lies a row of plastic granule bins.
Its practices, she pushes her grandchildren to imitate, are not only driven by new environmental thrust his generation ethics often called Japanese longstanding informed the samurai and craftsmen as well mottainai or waste not.
Each person must do something, said Mrs. Nii, so that their children and grandchildren can have a more peaceful life.
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