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Recycling Laws and Their Evaluation in Japan

2024 2 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count.
Akira Hibiki

Summary

Japan's suite of recycling laws — covering packaging, appliances, vehicles, construction materials, and food waste — is reviewed alongside the emerging microplastics problem and Japan's policy responses to it. The paper highlights that existing recycling frameworks were not designed with microplastics in mind, creating regulatory gaps that need to be addressed as plastic debris increasingly fragments into microscale particles.

In this chapter, firstly we explain the various recycling laws that have been enacted in recent years such as Container and Packaging Recycling Act, Home Appliance Recycling Act, Small Home Appliance Recycling Act, End-of-Life Vehicle Recycling Act, Construction Material Recycling Act, and Food Waste Recycling Act and discuss their problems. Second, we describe the “microplastics problem”, a new emerging global waste problem, and its measures in Japan. Finely we discuss the policy against illegal dumping which occurs in the waste and recycling management.

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