The Eco-Town Project is underway.

The Eco-Town Project is underway.
Kamaishi City in Iwate Prefecture, which once flourished as one of Japan's leading iron town centering on Nippon Steel Corporation's Kamaishi Works, has launched an eco-town project to create new industries.
The Committee for Promotion of Resource Recycling Industries (chaired by Yoshinori Sekimoto, professor emeritus at Iwate University), an industry-academia-government organization that is studying the details of the project with the aim of designating the area as an Eco-Town in fiscal 2002, has selected a site (approximately 400,000 square meters) owned by Nippon Steel Kamaishi facing Kamaishi Bay in the Hirata district as a candidate site for its business base.
"Specific business plans are under consideration.
Specific business plans were comprehensively evaluated and examined for business feasibility based on the implementation status of existing Eco-Town certified areas, the market size of various recycling businesses, location conditions, and other factors.
The first step is to establish an integrated recycling system from dismantling automobiles to proper disposal of shredder dust to comply with the Automobile Recycling Law scheduled to be enforced in 2004, and to utilize existing general waste treatment facilities for mixed treatment of industrial waste and heat energy, in addition to containers and packaging such as empty cans and PET bottles, The company plans to recycle local resources such as thinned wood and crushed stone crumbs, and to develop products using the processing residues of marine resources.
"Infrastructure development and logistics network construction.
In addition, the expansion of the breakwater at Kamaishi Port was completed in FY2006, and the Trans-Tohoku Expressway Kamaishi-Akita Route was opened to traffic.
The Sanriku Trans-Tohoku Expressway is also under construction, and a logistics network will be built to link the Tohoku region vertically and horizontally. The plan is also designed to link the automobile-related industries of the prefecture's land area and municipalities along the coast, as well as the northern region of Akita Prefecture and nightingale towns in Miyagi Prefecture that have already received Eco Town certification.
The plan is to apply for the certification by June 2002, and to establish an industry-government cooperative for automobile recycling in July 2002.
"Development of the automobile recycling business.
Although there are many auto dismantling and shredding companies located in Iwate Prefecture, the prefecture has long been dependent on Akita and Fukushima prefectures for the final disposal of 13,500 tons of shredder dust generated annually, and the prefecture intends to achieve complete processing on its own by integrating these automobile-related industries.
The company will collect end-of-life vehicles through automobile dealers, etc., thoroughly remove high value-added parts, and sell them as repurposed parts via the Internet, etc. Oil and cooling fluids will be extracted.
Oil and cooling fluids are extracted and recycled.
Interior plastic parts that can be recycled are supplied as raw materials to various industries in the prefecture, while ferrous and nonferrous metals are sold to blast furnace and foundry manufacturers.
Finally, only the poddy will be discharged as shredder dust.
The program will begin with 650 vehicles/month generated in the prefecture, and in the future the company hopes to collect more than 2,000 vehicles/month, mainly from the three neighboring prefectures of Aomori, Akita, and Miyagi.
In order to make automobile recycling an appropriate and profitable business, it is essential to reduce the volume of shredder dust, which is causing landfill disposal costs to skyrocket, and to find inexpensive ways to dispose of refrigerant CFCs and airbags.
"Waste Disposal Efficiency and Energy Reuse.
Only 3% of the total waste, or fly ash, is landfilled.
This is where mixing treatment, another pillar of the system, comes into play.
The Kamaishi City Waste Disposal Plant operates a coke bed shaft furnace that combines gasification and high-temperature melting, which was designed by Nippon Steel using its steelmaking technology and adopted in 1979 for the first time in Japan.
The high-temperature melting process of 1,700 to 1,800 degrees Celsius has been widely used throughout Japan as an excellent facility for reducing waste volume and curbing dioxin emissions.
Two furnaces with a processing capacity of 50 tons per day are in operation at the plant, which has been treating general waste from Ofunato City, Ofunato Environmental Sanitation Association (Ofunato City, Sanriku Town, Sumida Town), and Otsuchi Town since FY 2000. The refrigerants recovered from refrigerators and automobiles have already been destroyed by high-temperature treatment.
Almost all of the byproduct molten slag is reused as asphalt aggregate for road pavement, and almost all of the granular metal is reused as counterweights for heavy construction equipment.
Only fly ash is ultimately landfilled, which accounts for about 3% of the total waste.
The plan is to process shredder dust and other industrial waste together to secure a fixed quantity of waste, and to use the large amount of thermal energy obtained through stable combustion for power generation and other purposes.
Electricity will be provided to companies in the recycling complex, and surplus power will be sold to electric power companies.
Waste heat such as steam and hot water will also be supplied to food factories, vegetable farms, and aquaculture farms in the area as well as within the complex to help reduce costs in the industrial sector.