The Dream of Oil Left in Mikasa, Hokkaido: When the Era of Mass Circulation Ended 1997-2005

The Dream of Oil Left in Mikasa, Hokkaido: When the Era of Mass Circulation Ended 1997-2005
The withdrawal of the Hokkaido Mikasa Oil Recycling Center, established in Mikasa City, Hokkaido, symbolized the limits of Japan's waste plastic policy in the early 2000s. The Containers and Packaging Recycling Law was enacted against a backdrop of tight conditions at final disposal sites, and chemical recycling, including oilification, was expected to be the trump card for a recycling-oriented society. However, the recycling bidding system prioritized cost competition, and methods that could utilize existing facilities, such as blast furnaces, were favored. In addition, the quality of plastic recovered from municipalities varied, which deteriorated the quality and yield of the oil produced, resulting in a contradiction whereby the larger the volume of processing, the larger the deficit. In the case of Mikasa, the distortion caused by the system design emphasizing quantitative processing that did not mesh with the technical characteristics of the field first became apparent i
n the local region. This withdrawal led to a rethinking of the policy from mass batch processing to conditional recycling, which has led to today's discussion.