Dark Voices Echo - The Age of Recycling Laws and Outlaws (late 1990s-early 2000s)

Dark Voices Echo - The Age of Recycling Laws and Outlaws (late 1990s-early 2000s)

The voice that said "the law is not everything" was a symbolic phrase in Japan in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Amidst the recession and deflation that followed the bursting of the bubble economy, the government, under the banner of creating a recycling-oriented society, enacted numerous laws in a short period of time, including the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law (1995), the Home Appliance Recycling Law (1998), the Construction Recycling Law and the Food Recycling Law (around 2000), and many others. However, ideals diverged from reality, and companies that earnestly obeyed the laws suffered from high cost burdens, while companies that exploited gaps in the system profited. Every time a new recycling law was enacted, new dark players, such as packaging outlaws and home appliance outlaws, appeared, repeating the battle of wits between the law and the underworld. The cry of "the law is not everything" was not mere rebellion, but a cry of reality that pointed to the abs
ence of legal principles and economic rationality. Furthermore, China's rapid economic growth shook the resource market, and what was considered trash in Japan was traded as a resource in China, where exporters were active in the dark. In this way, the system itself was shaken as a dual structure was formed, with a front industry protected by law and outlaws looking for loopholes. The contradictions that emerged as laws to protect the environment gave rise to new crimes and an underground economy, illustrating the duality of light and darkness that covered this era.