Japan-a-TRASH-Madness!

OK... so this isn't a post about some neat gadget or a mistranslated marketing piece... it's about garbage. Apparently, the Japanese don't have a whole lot of room for giant American-style trash dumps so they incinerate most of their waste. According to this story in the New York Times some Japanese cities are now trying to eliminate waste entirely (WOW!) by instituting some really intense recycling efforts. These include but are not limited to requiring residents to sort waste into:

"44 bins collect everything from tofu containers to egg cartons, plastic bottle caps to disposable chopsticks, fluorescent tubes to futons"

Not to fear.. residents are provided a 27 page manual on how to do so correctly. Residents also receive visits from 'volunteers' who return their garbage to them if it is not sorted correctly and are shamed by their communities for failing to do so habitually. At least one family has been evicted for not sorting their trash effectively.

It's pretty late and I've spent far too much time at work tonight but all of this totally blows my mind. It also makes me feel like a goober for not always sorting recycleables into my two measly bins!

Factiod: Recycle in Japanese is リサイクルしなさい