One person’s trash is another’s treasure.

The problem is determining the fine line between trash and treasure, and sorting through the trash to find the treasures.

In Minamata, the citizens, local government and businesspeople have reinterpreted this old adage in a quest to become Japan’s most environmentally conscious city. This means learning from its past industrial pollution to re-think how resources are produced, consumed, and recycled.

I believe the city’s most admirable effort has been to work with citizens to create a waste sorting system that is community-driven and –practiced. It involves sorting waste into 24 categories so that the various items can be easily recycled later. Certain items are collected on particulr days, and one day per month a set of recycling bins is delivered to neighborhoods, where household representatives bring waste to be sorted.

I admire this system because it forces everyone to remain in intimate contact with a purchase through a longer portion of its life cycle. In other words, because used items cannot be immediately thrown in the chute (such as in HDB flats in Singapore), people have to live with their waste, and thus live with their purchases. Consumption becomes an act of thinking through more than just the immediate use of an item, to the long-term washing, storing, and sorting of the item. Some waste is only collected once a month, so one needs to carefully wash and store a glass bottle (for instance) until collection day. Thus, people may think carefully before making purchases that will eventually inconvenience their lives as waste. The official who spoke with us at City Hall stressed that one major change in his purchases is that he no longer buys any PET bottles. They must be carefully washed, and they take up a lot of space in the house before they are collected. Therefore, they are best avoided.

Lecture at Minamata City Hall regarding its environmental efforts

The city’s other admirable shift has been its addition of a fourth R to the existing three R’s of Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Minamata also encourages “Refuse” – refusing items deemed unnecessary, like superfluous packaging and excess plastic bags. While this may make it difficult for some industries to survive due to shifting consumer consciousness, like all businesses, they are expected to evolve to fit consumer demands. In other words, one should not encourage wasteful behavior just to benefit plastic bag manufacturers. If people refuse plastic bags at checkout, manufacturers eventually will evolve to make something else.

Given this spirit of four R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Refuse – Minamata has encouraged not only craftspeople who creatively re-tool waste into useful items, but also industries that turn waste into the raw materials for new goods.

One of the former is Mrs. Yoshimoto, the speaker at the Minamata Disease Museum, who recycles glass into useful objects and art pieces. One of the latter is Mr. Tanaka, President of Tanaka Shop (田中商店水俣営業所). His recycling center employs around 30 people and turns Minamata’s household waste into useful things, like glass bottles that can be re-used by beer and shochu manufacturers, or ground glass that can be incorporated into asphalt to make roads safer (they sparkle at night) and more permeable to moisture.

Mr. Tanaka explaining one of his many business ventures involving previously-designated "trash," which he turns into "treasures."

tour of the Tanaka facilities

We toured the Tanaka facility and saw how sake bottles are cleaned and inspected, before they can be returned to the bottling facilities. Mr. Tanaka also told us about a project in which wine bottles shipped from France and Germany are cleaned, refilled with sake, and returned to France and Germany. This saves disposing of the old bottles in landfills and manufacturing new bottles for the sake. Plus, it makes for a poetic loop of alcohol. It is feasible that the same bottles could endlessly run through this Europe-Japan cycle, holding wine-sake-wine-sake-wine…

Empty sake bottles before being cleaned inside and out

We enjoyed admiring the shapes and colors of the facility, relieving stress by smashing bottles (to be used in asphalt later), and listening to the refreshing perspective of Mr. Tanaka, who always stresses the business side of his venture. He is clearly not operating this business for the environment or because of a guilty conscious. He wants to make a profit, and he is constantly introducing new items to broaden the company’s reach.

Worker inspecting bottles for debris and cracks

Clear glass bottles with imperfections. They will be broken and used for many purposes.

Lynn sweeping up after smashing a bottle

It is my hope that our NUS students will be inspired to think about recycling not solely as an altruistic endeavor, but also as a potentially profitable one. This will make the adoption of new practices easier to envision and carry out. Maybe one day Singaporeans will also consider trash to be full of treasures ready to be found and utilized.