The "take-back" issue of used cardboard boxes - maintaining public collection routes and conflict of interest (2001)

The "take-back" issue of used cardboard boxes - maintaining public collection routes and conflict of interest (2001)

In 2001, Japan's recycling policy was in a transitional stage of institutional development: the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law (fully enforced in 1997), which came into effect in the late 1990s, established a structure in which citizens, local governments, and businesses shared responsibility for recycling, but new friction over the "value of resources" was emerging at actual operation sites. However, new friction over the "value of resources" arose in the actual operation of the law.

A typical example of this is the problem of "taking away" used cardboard and other paper. This refers to the act of private companies taking away used paper and other paper materials that local residents have sorted and put out at the municipal waste disposal site by truck in advance. On the surface, this may appear to be "collecting and recycling," but it is an act that bypasses the official collection route contracted by the municipality, and is a drain on the city's financial resources.

Why did this happen? The reason is the soaring price of recovered paper at the time. Particularly around 2000, China and other Asian countries grew and demand for paper resources increased. Recovered corrugated cardboard began to be traded at around 10,000 yen per ton, and was reevaluated as a valuable commodity rather than as waste. This price increase led to a "conflict of interest" between unlicensed dealers and some residents.

On the other hand, the local government, as a part of its services to citizens, finances the collection, transportation, intermediate treatment, and recycling of waste, and the removal of waste not only caused the loss of this source of income (profit from sales), but also shook the credibility of the entire system. There was also a practical problem for local governments, which had set the improvement of recycling rates as an administrative goal, as it became difficult to accurately grasp the amount of waste collected.

Underlying this problem is the structural issue of the institutional blurring of the line between "resources" and "garbage. When a resident puts out a piece of garbage, does it become "property of the city" or is it a "resource" that can be freely taken away? The legal interpretation is not unified, and the existence of ordinances and the ambiguity of penalties have encouraged people to take items away.

Since around 2001, local governments have been gradually enacting ordinances against this kind of removal, and crackdowns with penalties and awareness-raising activities have been strengthened. At the same time, the search began for a flexible system design, such as an "agreement-based model" that would take advantage of the recycling capabilities of private companies.

This issue was not merely a question of "illegal collection," but also an opportunity to rethink the design concept of a resource-recycling society, the division of roles between the public and private sectors, and the social definition of "waste, This discussion in 2001 was one of the key policy turning points that would later lead to the "ownership issue of recyclable resources" and the wide-area certification system.