Eco-friendly Japan
Comments: 3
The BBC reports on the recent Eco-Products Expo in Tokyo (which I couldn’t attend, unfortunately).
Japan cleans up its hi-tech act
J. Mark Lytle, BBCJapan is taking the lead in developing hi-tech products that protect the planet as a recent exhibition in Tokyo showed.
Thousands of environmentally friendly products were on display at the Eco-Products exhibition, which attracted over 100,000 visitors.
One very interesting snippet:
The Eco-Products show reflects how seriously Japanese businesses take the environment.
They lead the world in the respected ISO 14001 certification for reducing environmental impact.
The country has almost 10,000 such certified companies, which compares to a UK figure of only 3,000.
Good to see Japanese companies taking the lead in eco-friendly product design and manufacture. Now if we can just get the general population following suit.
It’s quite expensive to throw away large items such as furniture, computers, printers, &c in Japan. You generally have to make arrangements with the municipal garbage collection service and set a date when they’ll come by and pick stuff up.
This encourages people to dump junk out in the forests or along highways. I’ve been hiking in a lot of areas throughout the country and have been stunned by how people will just toss stuff anywhere. I’ve seen old printers and fax machines lying in stream beds, their final resting place after being thrown from the bridge above.
Once, crossing the Japan Sea, I stood gazing from the deck of the ferry in amazement as a red 14-inch television set went floating by.
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Posted to The Good • 2002.12.13 (Fri) • 21:32
Comments
Posted by Chris 2002.12.13, 22:51
Reminds me of a Grandaddy song: Broken Household Appliance National Forest. Quite beautiful it is too.
Posted by J Mark Lytle 2002.12.17, 19:17
As the author of that piece, I’m glad you liked it. Perhaps I’ll look at domestic appliance dumping next…
Posted by mattie 2005.10.15, 05:18
Waste disposal is cheap and easy here in Chicago, yet there is still junk and garbage everywhere. Every time I see somebody litter, it makes me think that we should let that whole “cruel and unusual punishment” thing slide and bring back the public stocks. It would be fun to head down to State Street at lunch to throw garbage at litterbugs.
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