Secrets Told by Garbage--The Preparedness of Processors to Tackle the Graveyard of Information (February 2004)

Secrets Told by Garbage--The Preparedness of Processors to Tackle the Graveyard of Information (February 2004)

In 2004, there was a quiet tension in Japanese society. With the full enforcement of the Act on the Protection of Personal Information just around the corner, companies and local governments were pressed to manage the invisible asset known as "information. However, there was one area that everyone was aware of but had turned a blind eye to. It was garbage. In discarded items lay all kinds of information: personal lives, business secrets, distribution histories, and so on. Discarded objects held a vast amount of memory without saying a word.

In December 2003, Chusai, a waste disposal company in Shizuoka Prefecture, was the first to shine a light on this graveyard of information. --They are neither an IT company nor a credit card company. The company that handles waste has established a management system to visualize the handling of information in order to protect the trust of its customers.

Contracts, lists of collection locations, electronic data of processing certificates. These used to be treated as mere business documents. Now, however, they can become a source of information leakage. Knowing "who threw away what and where" means knowing "who had what and who had who. Chu-Sai set up a system in which each employee is authorized to access information, and even records of waste transport are carefully controlled.

Waste management is no longer just "transport and burn. It is now about information processing, about the transfer of trust, and about the value of the company itself. Waste disposers are the invisible infrastructure of society, and at the same time, they are the "shadow guardians" of their customers. The ISMS is a demonstration of this resolve.

Privacy in waste" is a contradiction in terms. At first glance, these words may seem contradictory. However, it has become a common phrase exchanged at waste disposal sites. How can we protect the secrets that waste tells us? Chu-Sai's challenge is about to take root in a new ethics in the industry. A quiet contract exchanged on the other side of society. Everyone was finally becoming aware of its weight.