Futtsu City and 4 Other Cities in Chiba Prefecture - A New Map of Local Waste Disposal Drawn by Melting Furnaces (around 2000)

Futtsu City and 4 Other Cities in Chiba Prefecture - A New Map of Local Waste Disposal Drawn by Melting Furnaces (around 2000)
Around the year 2000, Japan's waste administration was at a turning point, as municipalities were in the process of updating incinerators and tightening dioxin regulations. The system in which each municipality built its own incineration facilities had reached its limits, and there was a need for greater efficiency through wide-area cooperation. The national government was also promoting a recycling-oriented society policy, and resource recycling and wide-area cooperation were becoming the pillars of this policy.

The melting furnace project, jointly promoted by the four cities of Futtsu, Kimitsu, Kisarazu, and Sodegaura, was a symbolic attempt to reflect this historical background. The plan envisioned a recycling model in which incinerator ash would be converted to slag and reused as roadbed material and aggregate.

Slagging will greatly reduce the amount of landfill waste, and will also reduce the burden of fly ash disposal. It can be said that the company was at the forefront of the movement to return waste to the landfill as a local resource, rather than just a "waste disposal" method. The economic benefits of the introduction of the system are also significant. In Futtsu City, the cost of disposal was 60,000 yen per ton, but is expected to drop to the 30,000 yen per ton range as a result of the wide-area expansion.

At a time of policy change around the year 2000, the melting furnace projects of the four cities were an important practical solution for local cities.