I’m a bit of a nutter for recycling, which to be honest, Mrs M finds a bit annoying. The annoying thing isn’t necessarily my laser-focused dedication to recycling every possible waste item that we can, so much as the unnecessarily and unfeasibly complicated nature of doing so in Japan. Sure, they’re very good on plastic bottles (or “PET bottles,” as they’re known here) and cans, which usually have their own dedicated recycling bins next to vending machines, but as soon as you move into things like paper, cardboard, polystyrene, and so on, depending on where you live, what day of the week it is, what receptacle you use to accommodate the materials for recycling, and any number of other factors, even I, as a hardcore eco-fanatic, sometimes just give up and throw them out with the ordinary rubbish.
So anyway, a few weeks ago, a flyer was delivered along with the monthly municipal newsletter that got me all excited. It said that the – ahem – “city” where we live is going to start collecting more plastics for recycling, specifically, those with this logo on them:
As expected, we will of course have to put these plastics in municipally designated clear plastic rubbish bags (with our surname written on the bag in marker pen, too), but, eagerly anticipating the prospect, I instigated a new regime of forcing…er, I mean, making…er, I mean politely asking Mrs M to save things like yoghurt pots, tofu trays, detergent, oil, and sauce bottles, and those inner plastic holder thingies that help prevent biscuits, rice crackers, and so on from being crushed inside their outer bags. The picture at the top of this post shows the results of about two weeks’ worth of new-world-order plastic collection, some of which involved me rescuing things from the kitchen bin and/or Mrs M having even more washing up to do than usual.
April is the beginning of the school, work, and financial years in Japan, so I assumed there would be some info arriving about where to buy the clear plastic bin bags and what days of the week to leave them out for collection. Then I decided to take another look at the flyer and realised that – OMG! WTF? – they’re not going to start the scheme until Reiwa 8. In other words, April 2026.
So I’m now reluctantly stuffing leftover plastics into the top of our ordinary rubbish on Tuesday and Friday mornings, and for another year at least, will continue with my usual routine of separating about six different materials, putting some in the recycling bins outside our local Kasumi supermarket, and leaving the rest out for collection on alternate Saturdays.
