Environment From an Industrial City to a Recycling-Oriented Society: Kawasaki Eco-Town in Full Swing 2002

Environment From an Industrial City to a Recycling-Oriented Society: Kawasaki Eco-Town in Full Swing 2002

In 2002, against the backdrop of the enactment of the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-Oriented Society, Japan was facing the important issues of waste reduction and resource recycling. With ratification of the Kyoto Protocol also on the horizon, it was necessary to simultaneously promote the prevention of global warming and the transformation of the industrial structure. Kawasaki City had flourished as a center of heavy and chemical industries during the period of rapid economic growth and had a history of being known as a city of pollution. From there, the city actively participated in the government's Eco-Town project with the aim of transforming itself into an environmental city.

Kawasaki Eco-Town was designed as a recycling center for turning industrial waste and by-products into resources. At the core of the technology introduced was pyrolysis technology to convert waste plastics into oil and gas, and attempts were made to reconvert waste into fuel and chemical raw materials. In high-temperature treatment using gasification and melting furnaces, waste materials were completely burned to decompose hazardous substances, and the thermal energy generated was recovered and used for power generation. The molten slag produced as a byproduct was rendered harmless and reused for roads and construction materials. This marked a major shift from "processing" waste to "turning waste into resources.

In addition, a variety of technologies were introduced, including a system for recycling steel slag and coal ash into cement raw materials and construction materials, resource recovery through wet processing technology for nonferrous metals, and the development of a CFC recovery and destruction system. Wet recycling, in particular, has been applied to the recovery of rare metals from electronic equipment and vehicles, and has made Kawasaki a center of environmental technology.

Kawasaki also became a center for research and development, with universities and corporate laboratories moving into the area to develop new materials and improve the efficiency of the recycling process. These efforts not only made waste disposal more efficient, but also led to the creation of a new industrial base to support a recycling-oriented society.

Considering the social context of the time, Kawasaki Eco-Town was an example that embodied the transformation from a city of pollution to a "test city for environmental industries" by combining the tightening of government regulations with technological innovation. The fact that a region that had experienced environmental destruction became a place where future-oriented recycling technology was developed based on overcoming such destruction was an event that symbolized the creation of a recycling-oriented society in Japan.