Darkness Illuminated by the Ministry of the Environment's 2003 National Survey--Memories of Quietly Discarded Home Appliances (February 2004)

Darkness Illuminated by the Ministry of the Environment's 2003 National Survey--Memories of Quietly Discarded Home Appliances (February 2004)

In 2004, Japan was beginning to confront the invisible shadow of discarded products under the "recycling-oriented society" concept. 2001 saw the enactment of the Home Appliance Recycling Law, a system for recycling four types of home appliances: televisions, refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners. However, this principle has not fully penetrated into reality, and the end of the products have been seen as a landscape of waste left out in the open.

According to a nationwide survey conducted by the Ministry of the Environment in 2003, 42,065 TV sets and 9,295 air conditioners were illegally dumped. They were lying quietly in the mountains, along riversides, and in the shade of farm roads, exposed to the elements without being seen by anyone.

Resistance to the cost of disposal, the cumbersomeness of the system, and the uncertainty of collection routes created a distance between the system and the public. Add to that the illegal disposal by the vendors, and the appliances fell through the net of the system.

The Ministry of the Environment began monitoring, raising awareness, and reinforcing the system, but what was being questioned was the "ethics of how to give things away. What do we entrust to the end of things? This question still lies in the cold silence of discarded home appliances.