Current status of the municipal organic waste composting project in Japan

Abstract

Japan is steadily implementing approaches to establish a "material-cycle society," and an increasing number of municipalities are showing interest in introducing waste composting as one way to manage waste produced by households. At the same time, however, a number of municipalities that introduced garbage composting during the 1950s and 1960s have ended it. The purpose of this paper is to determine the factors causing those municipalities to halt their composting operations and also to examine the requirements for composting to become more viable. Data were gathered through questionnaires and telephone intervi ews in 58 municipalities across the nation. It was determined that 11 had discontinued their composting operations and 47 were currently continuing them. Among the municipalities were the town of Tahara in Aichi Prefecture, which has stopped composting, and the town of Usuda in Nagano Prefecture, which is continuing it. These towns were chosen for on-site interviews. The results can be summarized as follows. Decrepit facilities and/or mechanical failures in their composting plants provided a rationale for some municipalities to discontinue their programs. However, insufficient demand for compost was found to be the primary factor in termination. The low demand for compost was determined by its relatively low quality. There were several reasons for the low quality of compost products. First, there was insufficient and inaccurate sorting of waste at home, often resulting in nonorganic materials being included among the compost. Second, the compost products obtained through this system were often inconsistent in their quality because the waste components and resultant compost composition often fluctuated from day to day. In conc lusion, this paper suggests that there is an urgent need to devise measures to improve and maintain the quality of compost products so that municipal composting projects will be more viable and beneficial in the future.