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 management policy was at a major turning point. The combination of aging incinerators and stricter dioxin regulations meant that municipalities were reaching their financial limits in terms of maintaining incineration facilities on their own. Under these circumstances, the national government was moving forward with the development of the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society and steering the country in the direction of emphasizing resource recycling and wide-area treatment. In this context, the melting furnace plan introduced jointly by Futtsu, Kimitsu, Kisarazu, and Sodegaura attracted attention as a new model for local administration.

The four cities jointly installed two melting furnaces with a capacity of 100 tons per day in the southern industrial area, which were scheduled to start operation in fiscal 2001. The melting furnaces melt incinerated ash at high temperatures, rendering it harmless as slag, which can then be reused as roadbed material or aggregate, thereby greatly reducing the burden on landfills. It also reduced the burden of fly ash disposal, and was a progressive effort to shift from simple incineration to resource recycling.

The economic benefits were also significant. In Futtsu City, the disposal cost is expected to be cut in half, from 60,000 yen per ton to 30,000 yen per ton, demonstrating the efficiency of wide-area utilization. The project was also evaluated as a mechanism for equalizing the financial burden, as the joint efforts of multiple cities made it possible to introduce the latest equipment.

The significance of this plan lies not only in the introduction of facilities, but also in the fact that it presented a new form of wide-area administration in which local governments collaborate across borders and share operation and resource recycling. At a turning point when the recycling-oriented society policy began, the efforts of the four cities were a realistic solution presented by the local government.