No Green Party at the Japanese Parliament means a lot

[Maciamo]

Give me a break. First the garbage bags and trash cans in train stations, and now the "signs"? And you are criticizing the Japanese of being not environmentally conscious. If the primary source of your knowledge of waste management in your locality is just those signs, that's a serious problem of yourself as an individual, not of Tokyo or Japan.

These "signs" indicate to the citizens what day and time each kind of waste is collected. The only categories in my ward and at least 5 other wards around, are combustible (可燃ごみ), non-combustile (不燃ごみ) and recycleable (リサイクル or 資源) and big stuff (大型ゴミ). That means that even if I want to separate further my waste, it will all end up in one of these three category, depending on the day of the week it is taken.

As for combini, most of them have 3 or 4 kinds of waste. Usually PET bottles/cans, newspaper/magazines, and others (mixing burnable and non-burnable). Maybe you have just arrived in Japan (considering the comments you make), but for your information, the 7 main "combini" companies have about 35,000 shops in all Japan, which means a lot of rubbish bins, as there are normally no other public rubbish bins than the combni's in many areas. Combini's are also the same everywhere. I have travelled to many regions of Japan, but have never seen combini with more rubbish categories. What I don't understand is that most do not separate burnable and non-burnable (except for recyclables), while domestic waste must be divided that way.

You should call the city office (区役所/市役所) asap to inquire into how to properly sort and dispose waste in your locality and try a little bit harder to be a good member of the communitry before making such a hasty negative judgement of an entire nation with scant, biased knowledge.

That you but my wife and in laws are Japanese and taught me exactly what to do. I also discussed the issues of lack of "categories" of waste with many Japanese friends.

The waste management issue is a prime example in your post that shows how full of **** you are. Same goes for leftist political parties and the rest. You surely speak a lot like some kind of authority on a subject that you don't know jack****.

Watch your language. So far you have not been able to provide any additional information I asked about some Tokyo wards having more than the 3 above mentioned categories of waste. You criticize a lot but in fact you are the one you doesn't seem to know what you are talking about.

Here are a few examples of waste management. It's only a quick Google search. I took the first cities coming.

Kumamoto City, Kyushu has only 3 categories, but 7 subcategories for the recyclable (ペットボトル , びん類, トレイ , 布類 , 紙類 , 古金物類 , 缶類) although the refuse collectors take all of them the same day (and mix them in the same truck or come with 7 different trucks ?).

But indeed that seem to vary a lot from one municipality to another. In Yabuzuka, Gunma, they are all clearly separated, something I haven't seen in Tokyo.

Tochio city, Niigata has 5 categories.

Shingu city, Hyogo has 4 categories with apparently 3 subcategories for recyclables.

So there are big differences from one municipality to another.

In Tokyo, I found that Katsushika-ku had 5 categories, Toshima-ku 4 categories, Suginami-ku 3 categories, Shinagawa-ku, etc. Complete list of wards' sites here.

Now it could be my misunderstanding, but if all wastes of one kind (eg. 不燃ごみ) are taken the same day, I suppose that everything is crushed together in the refuse truck (plastic, batteries, metal, gum, glass, leather...). I don't expect them to open all bags and separate all the various materials by hand. I admit not being an expert in refuse collecting or recycling, but as it seems to be your domain of predilection, you may give me more detailed info on whether all wastes of one category ends up in the same place, or if they try everything. For example, even paper has to be put in plastic bags here, but is considered 燃えるごみ. So do they open each bag carefully and take only the paper out for recycling (or burning) or do they just trash the paper and plastic together ?