How much do you know about garbage classification in Japan?

When it comes to Japan, everyone probably has this impression: Japan is small and has a large population, but Japan is very clean and beautiful.

Behind the clean and tidy appearance is Japan’s strict and almost abnormal garbage classification system.

Because Japan is located on an island, it has always been very crisis-conscious. After the defeat in World War II, we slowly began to seek internal optimization to avoid being occupied by garbage and occupying the already very limited living land.

As early as 1960, Japan proposed the 3R principle of garbage disposal---refuse, reuse, recycle, which roughly translates into reducing usage at the source, making the best use of materials in the intermediate links, and recycling at the terminal link. Reuse. The first official implementation of garbage classification was in Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture in 1975, and gradually spread throughout the country.

How extremely strict is Japan’s garbage classification? Take a yogurt bottle as an example. After drinking the yogurt, you must first rinse the yogurt bottle, disassemble the packaging lid, outer label, and bottle body and throw them away separately. If it is yogurt packaged in paper, it should be washed and then flattened and stacked. If classification is not carried out as required, penalties will be imposed.

Garbage sorting in Japan has been popularized since childhood. In school, primary school students have to do a certain amount of work, and garbage classification must be learned.

Promotional brochures and slogans on garbage classification can be seen everywhere on the streets, parks, and hotels.

If garbage is generated on the street, many people will carry it home to dispose of it. There are also very few trash cans on the streets.

If you stay in a B&B, you have to sort your garbage yourself. There are a lot of garbage cans in your residence. Generally, two are placed indoors and four on the balcony.

Different cities have different regulations. For example, in Yokohama, garbage is divided into 13 categories, and different items are sorted, packaged and recycled on different days. Dangerous garbage such as broken porcelain, broken glass, and sharp objects must be wrapped in layers and marked to prevent injury to the cleaners.

Although it is mentioned that many people in Japan have a national complex that cannot be overcome, we should still learn from their excellent places, such as garbage classification.