147 Ways to Separate Trash

In the US, the utility company sends you a 2-page leaflet that notes which Friday is a recycle day, and which Friday is not. Trash and recycling. Oh, and yard waste.

In Japan, you can pick up a 2-cm novella that describes provides a detailed calendar of the multiple different trash categories. These include: "square symbol" recycling, "circle" recycling", "A" trash day, "B" trash day, the still-mysterious "burnable trash", and "non-burnable trash", old/used clothing, and what we call "special trash". There are others, but let's start there. A two-page leaflet comes with this, and is posted on our fridge so that we remember what to take out each day:

Square and circle recycling are pretty straightforward: anything with a symbol like this:

   Or This:

In the States, we rarely went thorough products with that much plastic packaging. We use a lot more here - markets tend to package meat, fruit, and sushi etc., in single-serving styrofoam trays or boxes. Bring it home, use it, and recycle the container.

Burnable trash can be pretty much anything - as long as it is inside a yellow plastic bag. You can buy "burnable disposal" bags in different sizes at your local 7-11 or grocery store. Most people collect their trash, and set it out in front of their house covered by a plastic bin. This, apparently, is so the crows don't get at it! 

The garbage truck drives around in the afternoon, with the trash engineers (for they could be nothing less) calling an announcement on the loudspeaker. I usually hide inside at this point, just in case we collected and packaged the trash incorrectly.

The night before "A" and "B", trucks drop off a collection of yellow bins at your local trash collecting area. (Rarely further from your house than a block or two.) Each bin means something different. I finally took pictures of the label on each (full) bin, so we could see what to put in it, instead of guessing! There are separate yellow lug bins for clear glass, colored glass, white food trays, colored food trays, steel/tin cans, aluminum cans, milk cartons (break down flat), paper, PET bottles, aerosol bottles, bottle caps, etc. As I took the pictures this morning, my helpful neighbor shared with me that you separate paper garbage into: 1) cardboard/with a circle symbol, and 2) paper without a circle symbol. Oops. (Below: Nice neighbors sorting trash at 6am. One of the bins, showing a broken-down milk carton).

On "special trash"/"non-burnable" day, the truck drives down your street playing a synthetic, tinkling version of Mozart classics. Apparently “moonlight sonata” is supposed to remind you to take out the broken light bulbs and deceased furniture. It’s certainly nicer than the dull, irregular roar of an American garbage truck. The charmingly recorded music doesn't tell me what official sticker I have to put on my broken space heater before the nice truck will take it away...looks like another consult with the helpful neighbor!

The books and online translations seem to indicate that if you dispose of your trash INCORRECTLY, it will show back up on your doorstop with a notice of what you did. Happily, this has only happened once or twice...and we can mostly figure out what the mistake was. Back goes the item into our elaborate sorting system for next week.

While this system certainly takes more time and trouble than the system in the US, it keeps a lot of trash out of landfills - critical in a small, and impeccably clean country. I wish I could come up with a better system for sorting trash in the house than this: 

But still - Kudos to Japan for taking care of the environment. I wish I could read the guidebook...but given the number of cartoons and posters out there, I think that the Japanese might even have trouble with this sometimes...