Glass Factory of the Future: Urban Recycling's Circular Circle, 1996

Glass Factory of the Future: Urban Recycling's Circular Circle, 1996
In the mid-1990s, a large number of CRT televisions that had become popular during Japan's period of rapid economic growth were reaching the end of their useful lives, and the issue of waste home appliance disposal was rapidly emerging. At the time, the Home Appliance Recycling Law was still in the process of being enforced (2001), and many waste TVs were being incinerated or sent to landfills, causing serious soil and water contamination from lead-containing CRT glass. The tight storage space and increasing disposal costs were inevitable, especially in urban areas, and manufacturers and industry associations urgently needed to establish a sustainable collection and recycling model.

Against this backdrop, the Home Appliance Association of Japan completed a demonstration plant for dismantling waste TVs and recycling CRTs at Sunny Metal in Osaka City, following an earlier project in Nakataya, Saitama Prefecture. The facility will have an annual processing capacity of 100,000 units for 12- to 29-inch CRTs and will produce 1,200 tons of glass fragments per year. The glass-to-metal recycling rate of more than 95% was an extremely high level even for the time, and demonstrated new possibilities for resource recycling.

Related technologies include separation technology for leaded and lead-free glass, equipment to remove fluorescent powder from inside cathode-ray tubes, and a disassembly and sorting system to recover metal parts with high purity. These were designed as space-saving facilities that are both efficient through mechanization and safe for workers, and that are suitable for urban locations.

Operating in the metropolitan area of Osaka directly led to improved transportation efficiency by shortening the collection network and establishing an urban recycling model. This initiative played a demonstrative role in the practical design of the later Home Appliance Recycling Law system and the development of nationwide hubs, and was a symbolic step in accelerating Japan's transition to a recycling-oriented society.