Recycling

Part of buying food is deciding what you are going to do with the packaging material when you've consumed what you've bought. In Japan, this has become a major issue, since the Japanese often opt for what seems to me to be the most complicated solution to most problems.

A case in point: The ETC system for electron toll collection here requires that you pay around US $250 to buy some sort of machine that you mount in your car, and then put an approved credit card in the machine so that when you drive through the appropriate lane, the toll will be charged to that credit card.

Another case in point: Japanese normally back into parking spaces. The official reason as attested to by the driving test is that it's safer to pull out of a space going forward. That's true, of course, but it's also obviously safer to park pulling forward into a space. I also find it Much easier to pull forward into a narrow (parking) space rather than backing into the space.

Back to recycling.

As we go through the day comsuming food here in the house, we separate our "trash" into the following categories:

Burnable

Plastic

Styrofoam trays

Milk and juice cartons

Newspaper/cardboard/particle board

Glass

Aluminum cans

Steel cans

Burnable

This includes food and paper, of course; also saran wrap, aluminum foil, and even the plastic caps of PET bottles AND the plastic ring that's left around the neck of a PET bottle after you take the cap off. They sell special tools for taking these rings off. "Burnable" trash goes in a pink bag with the town name printed on it. I write our name on the bag with a marking pen. This is so we'll know whose bag it is in case the garbage collectors decide they won't pick it up because there is something inappropriate in the bag.

Plastic

Almost all plastic bags, trays, containers, etc. In theory, all recyclable plastic should have a recycling symbol on it, with the katakana プラ "pura" which means plastic. Many containers, of course, are of mixed materials. These will typically say somewhere on the label which part is pura and which part is paper. This goes into an orange plastic bag printed with the town name on it. I buy the bags at the supermarket. I write our name with a marking pen in the space provided. All of this at least gets a good rinse because it sits in our kitchen up to two weeks until collection day. (Yoshie would wash it all thoroughly even if we were about to take it out for collection.)

Styrofoam Trays

These can go in プラ but I can avoid filling up that bag by taking them to one of the nearby supermarkets which have recycling bins in front.

Milk Cartons

These have to be rinsed well, then cut so they open out flat. then they get stacked. They can be put out on the days designated for プラ -- the first, secoond, fourth and fifth Wednesdays of each month. They can also be taken to the supermarkets and put in the appropriate recycling bins.

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PET bottles

As I said, these need to have the caps and neck rings removed. Instead, I've been taking one a day on my morning walk and slipping it into a recycling bin next to one of the ubiquitous drink vending machines. I pass at least a dozen on my walk even though I normally take country roads most of the time.

Cans, bottles, etc.

As you can imagine, these have their own rules and complications. It all reminds me of the early days of recycling. I was living in Capitola, in Santa Cruz County, California. A couple times a month I would take all our bottles to the Grey Bears Recycling Center next to the drive in theater.

EACH COLOR OF GLASS BOTTLE HAD TO BE PUT IN A DIFFERENT BIN!

I thought we'd gotten away from that sort of intensive consumer-sorting, but not here in Japan.