Soil Memory and Lighted Cycle - The Challenge of Organic Farming and Food Waste Energy in Ogawa-machi, Saitama Prefecture - circa 2004

Soil Memory and Lighted Cycle - The Challenge of Organic Farming and Food Waste Energy in Ogawa-machi, Saitama Prefecture - circa 2004

In the early 2000s, Japan was in the midst of a period in which it was making a major shift toward returning waste to society as resources rather than mere "garbage" through the development of the "Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society" (2000) and the "Food Recycling Law". As the distortions of a mass-consumption society became apparent as an environmental burden, the coexistence of urban and rural areas and local production for local consumption of energy became the issues of the next generation. In the midst of this trend, Ogawa-machi, Saitama Prefecture, was an early mecca for organic farming, and based on the organic farming movement that began in the 1970s, the town was practicing a "recycling-oriented town development that returns to nature.

One of the town's symbolic efforts was the methane fermentation of food waste project led by the NPO "Ogawa Town Climate Utilization Center. In 2006, the project was adopted as part of the Ministry of the Environment's "Regional New Energy Vision" project, and a biogas plant with a capacity of 500 households was planned. The story of such a cycle, in which food waste generated by residents is returned to the community as light and heat, has quietly begun to take shape.

At the same time, Ogawa Town was also collecting waste cooking oil to make recycled soap. Schools, stores, and households in the town cooperated to create "handmade soap" from waste oil, a process that was truly an attempt to reconstruct the relationship between people and the environment. These activities were not limited to the mere introduction of environmental technology, but were aimed at the "revitalization of local lifestyles" itself.

This trend was preceded by the "regional recycling and symbiosis zone" concept later proposed by the Ministry of the Environment, and is still carried on today by the "Ogawa-machi Eco-Town Concept" and the "Ogawa-machi Organic Farming Promotion Council. Turning food scraps into lights as part of the cycle of life, rather than burning them--this was a quiet revolution in a small town that is reexamining the connection between resources and people.