Between the Environment and Illegality: A Tale of Waste Plastic Transboundary Tales, March 2001

Between the Environment and Illegality: A Tale of Waste Plastic Transboundary Tales, March 2001

In 2001, Japan was a recycling-oriented society, and the banner of resource recycling was fluttering in the streets. The containers and packaging recycling system was expanded, the home appliance recycling system was fully implemented, and the Basic Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society was launched. The principles were in place, the colors of sorting were increasing, and people had a little faith in the future. On the other side of the coin, however, bundles of waste plastic were transported to ports and crossed the sea under the guise of resources. The bundles untied at the export destination are often contaminated with foreign substances, and sorting is a laborious process. They burn. Smoke. Piled up on the riverside, melted by the rain, down the river, and crushed into the sea. If they are pushed out of sight, they do not disappear.

In the background lies the shadow of the long 1990s. Stagnation after the bursting of the bubble economy, pressure to reduce costs, tightening of final disposal sites, and rising unit disposal costs. Domestic processing capacity could not keep up in terms of both quantity and quality, and mixed plastics in a mixed state became a difficult cargo to handle. This, combined with the expansion of trade in Asia and the low cost of container logistics, opened a circuit that, while recycling in name, in reality externalizes processing. The dynamics created by the concentration of wealth and the gaps in regulations provided an incentive to send the burden to places that were hard to reach.

Cargo transported south from the port ends up in the hands of local people. Bare-handed sorting, alley incineration, black smoke, and ash fall. Resins containing chlorinated additives release toxic substances in low-temperature incineration, and microscopic debris flows with the wastewater. Fears of health hazards have attached themselves to daily labor. The spirit of the Convention is challenged here. In light of the international framework that calls for the control of transboundary movements and environmentally appropriate management, the gap between the nominal and actual conditions cannot be overlooked. The public good of the environment is being encroached upon by the private gain of illegality, and debts are piling up across national borders.

Even within Japan, the contradictions have made a creaking sound. There are suspicions that efforts to separate the waste will be hollowed out through exports, anger toward businesses that are circumventing the system, and exhaustion on the frontlines of local government. News reports and citizen group follow-ups have illuminated the culvert that sinks behind the narrative of resource recycling. The government is moving to tighten monitoring and procedures, checking the actual status of export inspections and strengthening the notification system. In Japan, the development of intermediate treatment and heat recovery facilities with high sorting accuracy was discussed, and emission control and resin simplification at the design stage also emerged as issues.

March 2001 will be remembered as the season when the words of philosophy and the burden of reality collided. Resource recycling is both an objective and a means to an end. Facing up to this ambivalence, efforts to backfill the culverts of transboundary crossings led to the subsequent tightening of regulations and the raising of domestic processing capacity. When the shadow of illegality fell on the story told in the name of the environment, we saw for the first time the seams of the circle of circulation.