Musashino City, Tokyo: The Birth of a Model for Collecting Waste Cooking Oil that Moved Environmental Policy from the Household (Early 1990s)

Musashino City, Tokyo: The Birth of a Model for Collecting Waste Cooking Oil that Moved Environmental Policy from the Household (Early 1990s)
When Musashino City in Tokyo began collecting used cooking oil from households in 1991, the city's environmental policy was shifting to sorting and recycling, but the response to household waste was still in its infancy. The city was concerned that used household oil was clogging sewage pipes and causing city-specific problems such as foul odors and oil slicks in rivers, as well as affecting the temperature control of incinerators and the deterioration of refractory materials.

Musashino City adopted a citizen-participatory collection model, using four city sub-branches and ten community centers as bases, and distributed 200 grams of soap powder to households who brought it in a container. This small-scale resource circulation model was designed with an awareness of the circulation within the city and also had the effect of environmental education. In the first half of the 1990s, measures against domestic wastewater were strengthened and the government and citizens worked together to reduce the wastewater load, and Musashino City's efforts were introduced as an advanced example in the central government's data.

The environmental movement of the time emphasized actions in which citizens could directly participate, and the act of bringing waste oil to the city had a significant effect in raising awareness of the importance of self-regulation of the urban environment. The biodiesel fuel business and waste oil soap activities that later spread nationwide were based on the accumulation of such municipal models, and Musashino's efforts occupy an important position in the urban environmental policies of the 1990s as an ecological model with citizen participation.