Recycling

Japan is the emperor of recycling, in my opinion. Let me tell you why. On our first night, our kind welcoming party very thoughtfully tried to explain "trash" to us. You might ask yourself, "What is there to explain about trash, Michelle?" I might then respond, "Oh you naive Americans. You have no idea."

We have been here a little less than three weeks (only three weeks? Wow!), and I am just now 90% sure I know what to do with our garbage. Upon our arrival, we were shown a large poster, full of colorful pictures of different kinds of garbage. Someone had taken the time to attempt a translation of the instructions regarding said garbage. Unfortunately, the translations were along the lines of "rest garbage", "rest paper", "burn garbage", and "rest plastic". Aaron and I still joke about whether or not something is "rest paper" or "rest plastic".

Well, here's how it works. We have six trash cans. We actually need one more, but we will manage since we don't use much PET (recyclable) plastic. Each can is for something different. (1) Refuse: food garbage. Only food.
(2) Aluminum and tin: No problem. That's a familiar recyclable category.
(3) PET plastic: The kind with the little triangular recycle symbol. Okay, still makes sense.
(4) "Rest plastic": Huh? This is apparently all the plastic and plastic-like trash. After about a week, I figured out what the symbol on this looked like (square). You can see it on the bag of Japanese pancake mix I posted a picture of.
(5) "rest paper": This seems to be paper that is not cardboard and not writing paper. I think this category confuses me the most. Fortunately, most items have a symbol, so we just look for that. This one is kind of oval shaped.
(6) Burnable: This is paper that doesn't go in "rest paper" and other items that are burned, like diapers.
(7) Non-burnable, non-recyclable: this stuff even has a different color of trash bag to go in - blue. It is for anything else, as long as it is not hazardous, very large (as in an appliance).
You must also separate out and bind: newspaper, books, and milk cartons - yes, milk cartons are in their own category. You rinse them and tear them apart until they are flat. We keep ours in a cabinet until it is time to put them out.

If you don't have a headache yet, just wait, there's more. Refuse is picked up every Tuesday. Burnable trash is every Wednesday. All the other recyclable products are picked up on the first and third Thursday. I still don't know what to do with the "blue bag" stuff, hazardous items (for us, mainly old batteries), but I'm sure we will get it figured out.

People take trash separation seriously around here. They have a wide selection of bins you can buy (which we finally acquired, so we could get rid of our multiple plastic bags laying around the kitchen). Here's an example. At school, I eat lunch with the students. When we finish eating, this is what everyone does (the whole school, including staff, eat together).

1. Dump any left over food into one of the food containers the food arrived in (it is prepared in one location). Don't leave any food in your dishes. Stack the dishes in the appropriate stack.
2. If something was wrapped in foil, put it in the bag for foil.
3. If you left your chopsticks at home and used disposable wooden ones, put the wrapper and hashi (remember that word?) in the burnable trashcan.
4. Put the wrapper from your straw in the "plastic" trashcan
5. Tear apart your milk carton by looking for the seam and pull it apart, all the way down to the bottom (I swear to you, everyone does this the same exact way). Rinse it and stack it with the others.
6. Rinse your straw and put it in the bin with the other straws.
7. Rinse and stack your tray.

This is all set up in something resembling an assembly line. On my first day eating lunch, a very nice teacher/school nurse walked me through it - literally, as she speaks less English than I do Japanese.

So, next time you think recycling in America is too much work.... think twice!


The pictures are from this evening. Holt and Ruya are watching "I Dig Dirt". I thought Ruya's eyes were going to pop out when he saw it on the computer. Aaron and Ridge are making PANCAKES! Note the Japanese pancake mix.

One more thing - translation problems to the max: while working today with Mr. Kamaya and the Health Insurance rep, I had to answer some health related questions to complete my application for National Health Insurance. It took about an hour, since language was a big issue. First question: Mr. Kamaya pops out his handy-dandy translator/computer and shows me a long list of kanji and English, with words like "medicine," "drugs", etc. Thinking they needed to know if I was on any medication, I said yes. Ooooh, you should have seen their faces! Thinking quickly, it occurred to me that wasn't what they wanted to know. I said, "drugs OR medicine?" He nodded. I said, "As in illegal drugs?" He nodded again. No wonder they looked like I had grown two heads...they had asked if I had done illegal drugs any time in the past three months. Oops!