Japan's first Zero Waste town demonstrates sustainable consumption
Can Kamikatsu's success be replicated throughout Japan?
In 1998, the 1,500-person community of Kamikatsu on the island of Shikoku learned that new regulations to limit dioxin pollution would require it to shut one of its two garbage incinerators. This event was the trigger for Kamikatsu to rethink its patterns of consumption and waste management, leading to the town's 2003 "zero waste" declaration - a commitment to eliminate waste by 2020 without resorting to incinerators or landfills.
On a rainy Sunday in April, I visited Kamikatsu to learn about the zero waste initiative, and to see how it has affected residents' lives.
Recycling and education converge at the Zero Waste Center
Tiny Kamikatsu is far from the largest community in the world with a zero waste program, but it might be one of the most famous; earning the attention of The Washington Post, and other global media. That's partly because of its impressive recycling rate of over 80%, but also because Kamikatsu embraced a role as an evangelist for zero waste. The town worked with architect, Hiroshi Nakamura, to design its Zero Waste Center - an iconic structure that elevates the space for sorting trash into a beacon for the zero waste movement.
Viewed from above, the Zero Waste Center takes the form of a question mark. This structure is the hub for Kamikatsu's initiative. It's where residents of the town come to dispose of waste that they have painstakingly cleaned and separated in to 45 categories: Biodegradable waste is composted at home. Items that can be reused are donated to the "kuru kuru shop," at one end of the structure. (Kuru kuru means "going round and round"). For every other category of trash, from bottle tops to refrigerators, there is a dedicated container under beams of local cedar that support the elegantly curved roof. This approach may seem fussy to consumers who are accustomed to single stream recycling, but is the key to enabling Kamikatsu to turn waste into resources that can be sold - generating revenue to offset the town's costs.
For the walls of the kuru kuru shop and other enclosed areas of the Zero Waste Center, architect Nakamura asked townspeople to donate window frames that they didn't need. It turned out that people had a huge number of window frames lying in storage after projects to renovate or dismantle buildings in the past. Around 500 frames went into the construction of the Zero Waste center, creating light interior spaces with a shabby-chic aesthetic.
At the base of the question mark is a dot shaped building - a unique hotel formed of four guest rooms that encircle a central atrium. This is Hotel Why, which offers guests an experience of sustainability in practice. Rooms are furnished and decorated with upcycled and salvaged items, and each guest is given a basket with separate sections for different categories of waste. At check-out, they are instructed by a staff member on how to dispose of their trash. The hotel hosts guests from all over Japan, who stay with the specific objective of learning about sustainability. A lecture theatre in the "stem" of the question mark allows the Zero Waste Center to offer education programs to groups from other towns and cities.
Sustainability has brought Kamikatsu together as a community
In the kuru kuru shop, visitors can browse pre-loved furnishings, homewares, and clothes - and take any items that they can use for free. The only requirement is that "customers" must note the weight of the items they take away in the log book, so that the total weight of "rescued" items (442 Kg) can be displayed on the counter. It was here that I met a member of the Zero Waste Center's operation crew, Hiroki Tamura, who was happy to explain Kamikatsu's various sustainability initiatives and to demonstrate some of his own upcycling projects.
After a childhood in Kamikatsu, Tamura went to study engineering and later pursued a career as an engineer with one of Japan's leading manufacturers. Although he achieved success in his career, he always dreamed of returning to his hometown, and he finally achieved that dream a few years ago. Today he lives in Kamikatsu, growing citrus fruits when he isn't working at the Zero Waste Center, where he gives new life to broken appliances and furnishings - transforming worn out cassette players into Bluetooth speakers for smartphones, or attaching a salvaged swivel-chair base to the seat from someone's dining room to create a very on-brand receptionist's chair.
When he returned to Kamikatsu, Tamura was saddened to find that his school friends had all moved away: In rural communities all over Japan, young people have moved to urban areas, leaving towns and villages with dwindling populations of seniors. In Kamikatsu's case, however, there has been an influx of residents from all over Japan and even overseas. Tamura feels that the town's sustainability initiatives have fostered a vibrant community by creating a focal point for connections between existing residents and newcomers.
Human behavior counts for more than facilities
Kamikatsu's sustainability project stands out for the quality and coherence of its design. Another of Nakamura's buildings - the Rise & Win brewery and store - serves as a gathering place for townspeople. With another wall of upcycled windows, it serves as a brew pub, barbecue restaurant and store. In keeping with the town's sustainable ethos, customers can bring reusable containers to buy household essentials in bulk.
The high standard of these facilities could lead a skeptical observer to question whether Kamikatsu is "for real." But this is not a vanity project with a green hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot, and Kamikatsu is not a hipster enclave - It's a regular community with the same fiscal, demographic, and environmental challenges as other small towns. What sets Kamikatsu apart is not so much the handsome buildings. It's the willingness to realize its ambitious goals with continuous efforts to engage citizens of all ages and backgrounds, understand their challenges, and identify solutions.
One example of this approach is the town's program to eliminate illegal dumping of trash. It's a problem that blights river banks and roadsides in remote spots, where people throw out large items to evade oversized trash disposal fees. Once a pile of broken bikes and rusting refrigerators is established, it just attracts more trash over time. Kamikatsu took a two-pronged approach to banish such unsightly, illegal junk piles. First, the town eliminated disincentives to proper disposal of large items. There are no fees for any kind of trash that residents bring to the Zero Waste Center. As Tamura explained "People realize that if they can get something onto the back of their truck they might as well bring it to the right place." In addition, Kamikatsu puts eyes on the locations where illegal dumping has been a problem. After cleaning up known trash piles, the town published a map of trails and walking routes with "echo spots" highlighted to encourage people to explore the town's trails and find places where their voices reverberate in the valleys. This helps to ensure that that trash is reported when it appears, and dealt with before things get out of hand.
The community also discusses what to do about categories of waste that it struggles to deal with today. Examples include packaging that contains mixed materials, which residents must separate before recycling, and empty soda bottles, which the town has to pay a neighboring town to take away. Tamura explained the dilemma: "If we bought a machine to turn PET bottles into pellets, we could sell them to manufacturers as a raw material - but that takes a significant capital investment." Kamikatsu's small size puts limits on the investments that it makes and the influence that it can exert over manufacturers whose products and packaging create problematic waste.
mct's take: As larger towns follow Kamikatsu's lead, waste reduction efforts will exert more influence over the way things are made
While Kamikatsu's Zero Waste initiative started out as a necessity, it has become a way of life and a central part of the town's identity. Today, the Zero Waste Center is a motif for sustainability in Japan, and a catalyst for programs in other towns and cities.
At least four more Japanese communities (with a combined population of more than 100,000 people) have made Zero Waste or equivalent declarations: Oki Town (Fukuoka Pref.), Ikaruga Town (Nara Pref.), Miyama City (Fukuoka Pref.), and Minamata City (Kumamoto Pref.), where mercury poisoning was a focal point for Japan's first wave of environmental activism in the 1960s and 70s. Many more local administrations have visited Kamikatsu to seek advice to improve their recycling programs.
What works in a tight-knit, rural community can't be replicated in every part of Japan. Apartment-dwellers in large cities won't shoulder the burden of transporting waste materials in their own vehicles like the citizens of Kamikatsu. They do their best to separate trash into a handful of categories for collection at street level.
On the other hand, large population centers have the scale and influence to achieve things that Kamikatsu can't. In particular, they can exert on companies that are "upstream" in the product lifecycle. If large cities refuse excessive packaging (individually wrapped bananas, anyone?), and reduce food waste the impact will go way beyond simply improving recycling rates at "downstream" waste management facilities.
By adapting the lessons from Kamikatsu, Japan's cities can reduce waste as outlined in the United Nations' 12th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG): "Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns."