The Recycling Business is a Manufacturing Business" - Perspectives from around 2002

The Recycling Business is a Manufacturing Business" - Perspectives from around 2002

Around 2002, against the backdrop of the prolonged recession that followed the collapse of the bubble economy, the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society (enacted in 2000) and the Food Recycling Law were being developed, and there was a social demand for a shift from waste disposal to recycling. In reality, however, many recycling businesses were unprofitable and were not achieving the expected results.

In this context, the author emphasizes that the recycling business should be reconsidered on the same footing as the "manufacturing industry. The first stage is "procurement of raw materials. In other words, the prerequisite is to secure waste not as mere trash, but as resources of uniform quality. If sorting is not done properly, processing costs will jump, and the game is almost decided there. The second stage is the "production process. Just like a production line in the manufacturing industry, if proper facilities and efficiency are not ensured, product quality will be low and the business will not be viable. Finally, the third stage is "marketability. The third and final stage is "marketability," which is whether the recycled product can actually be sold, and whether there is a use or need for the product. If there is no demand for the product, the product will be returned to the waste stream, and the cycle will be broken.

These arguments poured cold water on the "recycling is good" trend of the time. The proposal for a shift to "manufacturing-type recycling" that survives in market competition, rather than a system supported by subsidies from the national and local governments, reflects the atmosphere of waste and recycling policy in the early 2000s. The entire text has the rhythm of a monologue in which the author asks himself "Why do businesses fail?

In Japanese society at the time, resource recycling was often a philosophy-driven business that lacked a realistic business model, and this article was a vivid demonstration of that contradiction.