Cities that Collapse and Connect: The Turning Point from Construction Waste to a Recycling Society (2000)

Cities that Collapse and Connect: The Turning Point from Construction Waste to a Recycling Society (2000)

In the year 2000, Japan's urban space was quietly beginning to change its shape. Countless buildings constructed during Japan's postwar period of rapid economic growth were being demolished as they became decrepit, and in Tokyo and other metropolitan areas, demolition work had become an everyday scene. Piling up behind them is another legacy that has never been mentioned: a mountain of construction demolition waste.

The Ministry of Construction predicted that 55 million tons of waste would be generated in the Tokyo metropolitan area alone by 2025; as of 1995, the recycling rate was 65 percent for concrete mass and 40 percent for lumber. Even though recycling seemed to be making progress, the reality was that the remaining millions of tons were going into landfills. The biggest reason for this is the mixed disposal of materials on site. Rebar, wood, and insulation were all discharged together, losing their resource value.

In response to these issues, the government was promoting the introduction of a new technical method called "sorted demolition. By separating building materials into different types for dismantling, the recycling rate could be greatly improved. However, this approach required expertise and cost, and institutional support from the government was indispensable for its widespread use.

The background leading up to this turning point is long: from the 1950s to the 1970s, Japan continued to push forward with "making things. Cities expanded, and construction was the means to shape the future. In the 1980s, scrap and build became the norm. As urban renewal was repeated through building and tearing down, an "invisible urban layer" of waste quietly piled up.

In the 1990s, waste administration finally began to undergo structural reforms: the Waste Disposal and Public Cleaning Law was revised in 1991, the Basic Environment Law in 1993, the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law in 1995, and ISO 14001 in 1997, all of which steadily prepared the system and awareness. Finally, in 2000, the Basic Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society was enacted.

This law regarded waste as a "resource," and in principle, waste should be reused, recycled, heat recovered, and finally disposed of in this order. The construction sector is also being affected by this law, as it is becoming mandatory to dismantle and reuse waste materials separately. The year 2000 was the year that marked the boundary between the mass construction and mass disposal models and the recycling model.

Demolition is not the end. It is a quiet beginning to start envisioning the next society while remembering the city of the past. In the year 2000, Japan was taking a step forward in fundamentally rethinking the relationship between cities and resources.