The recycling business is a manufacturing business.

The recycling business is a manufacturing business.

Around 2002, the Basic Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society and the Food Recycling Law were enacted, and the recycling of waste was being promoted as a policy. However, I had strong doubts about the current situation in which many recycling businesses at that time were unprofitable and were not producing results. I had always thought that it was necessary to reconsider the recycling business from the same perspective as the manufacturing industry. First of all, the procurement of raw materials is crucial. Waste must be regarded as a resource, and the quality of the waste must be ensured through thorough sorting. If this is done incorrectly, the business will fail from the start. The next important factor is the production process. Without proper facilities and efficient recycling, the product will not be complete and will not be accepted by the market. And finally, there is marketability. Recycled products that have no demand or use will eventually revert to wa
ste. I have been advocating that these three stages should be considered dispassionately from the perspective of profitability. In an age when recycling was being proclaimed as a "good" idea, I dared to throw cold water on the enthusiasm for it and insisted that it could not be sustained without the introduction of a manufacturing-type rationality. This essay, which I wrote while asking myself many questions, has a realistic feel as if it were the voices of managers and engineers discussing the issue. I urged a society that is biased toward ideals to face the realistic dynamics of the marketplace.