Eco-Model Cities

The conveyor belt is moving large numbers of 1.8 liter brown shochu (alcoholic beverage) bottles. One by one, stoppers are pulled out, rust stains removed, and bottles washed by an automated process. After the bottles have been washed, they are sent to the inspection line where operators make visual checks for scratches or dirt, and if no problems are found, the bottles are packed in boxes and sent to the distilleries. At Tanaka Co., a glass bottle washing plant located at the Eco-Town industrial park in Minamata, Kumamoto Prefecture, approximately 3.5 million beer, shochu and sake bottles are reused every year by this series of processes.

Tanaka Toshikazu, president of the company, explains, "It's because there are very few plants like ours anywhere in Japan. Our clients are not only in Kumamoto Prefecture, but we have large numbers of empty bottles sent to us from Tokyo and thereabouts."

Established in 1999, the Eco-Town is the centerpiece of the Minamata Eco-Town Plan (urban planning that is in harmony with the environment) promoted by Minamata City. In addition to Tanaka Co., there are eight facilities reusing and recycling kitchen waste and PET bottles, used cooking oil, and building materials.

Since the early 1990s, Minamata City has been working very hard on broad environmental measures built around the pillars of converting to industrial activity that is concerned with natural ecosystems and biological diversity, protecting and passing on nature as the basis for life, reviewing lifestyles, and creating systems for a society that recycles resources. The background to the engagement with these positive and groundbreaking environmental measures lies in the "negative history" that still today remains a burden and an influence in Minamata.

In the 1950s Japan achieved rapid economic growth focused on the heavy and chemical industries. In Minamata, many people fell victim to what came to be known as Minamata Disease when organic mercury contained in wastewater from a chemical plant polluted the water supply. Still today, the number of victims who live their lives while suffering from serious aftereffects is not small. Because of these circumstances, many Japanese people instantly associate Minamata with environmental pollution.

Kawano Eiji at the Minamata City Office comments, "I think that the administration and residents joined together to take positive environmental action precisely because there are lessons to be learnt from the Minamata Disease that we will never be able to forget. There is a strong sense among all residents that pollution on that scale must never be allowed to occur again."

Environmental measures at Minamata began with efforts to reduce waste and to separate garbage by detailed categories on a scale that had little precedent in Japan at the time. Before then, kitchen waste had only been separated into the minimum categories of burnable and non-burnable waste, but in order to turn waste into resources, the residents were central to the prompt implementation of a system of separation with twenty different categories in 1993. The city has a total of 300 resource and waste stations, or one station per 50 to 100 households.

Kawano comments, "When we first started the system of separating waste by twenty categories, we heard from a considerable number of residents who found it tiresome and annoying. However, now, separating waste is seen as a matter of course, which reflects increased awareness of environmental issues among residents. Recently, we have also noticed that local communication has been revitalized, with residents 'chewing the fat' at the resource and waste stations." In addition to separating waste, the Recycling Committees set up in every district have been instrumental in implementing measures such as the "take-your-rubbish-home" movement, the recycling movement and free markets set up to reuse unwanted items.