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Payment for Garbage
It is a good symptom that we have been very concerned about how to dispose or how to decrease garbage.
It is very troublesome to divide garbage into a few different bags according to the kind. But we noticed how dangerous or how reckless it is to throw them away without any hesitation. On the garbage-collecting day we see here and there some people are busy dividing bottles and cans into some special boxes. Especially, senior people and housewives seem to be very helpful and take a leadership in the small community.
Also in Toyota Motor Corporation, they are trying to enforce the policy to decrease the refuse as much as possible, and declares that they will decrease the refuse for landfill down to zero by the end of 2001. It is conventional that Tsutsumi Plant, which is one of the biggest plants in Toyota City, has produced as much as 7,000-t refuse and 568-t of which was used for landfill in '97.
Since then they have introduced new machine which can gather even a little chip on the floor and divide into the different kinds and succeeded in cutting off down to 99% of the amount in this June, and they are sure to produce no refuse for landfill in this October.
They say the purpose has been able to achieved owing that all the workers realized that refuse should be important resource for recycling.
We can learn from the example "where there is a will, there is a way."
But however less we may have garbage, we have to find out the alternative of Fujimae tidal flats as a landfill near future, if we continuously produce so many products which are hard to be recycled or which are toxic to be burnt out.
There are some cities and local autonomies where some amount of money is charged for garbage gathering. They have to spend 40-yen for one bag, and they also have to put the sticker on a big garbage, which costs 300-yen to 900-yen.
On account of charging system, people have become to pay more attention to decreasing the garbage. But it is too optimistic to expect the drastic decrease of garbage by the charging system.
According to the report of Kitakyushu City, where the charging system has been already introduced, the effect of the system is said to at most 10% off.
In Nagoya City, we have been making an effort to decrease garbage as much as possible, and decreased 10% less than before.
Question 1: Do you think charging system of garbage should be introduced in Nagoya City ?
Question 2: What can makers or consumers do in order to decrease garbage as much as possible ?
Question 3: How do you pay attention to protect the environment ?
Question 1: Anything about this topic