We are all struggling with garbage. It comes in so many varied forms. In the world of information the battle against garbage may not take the form of a threat to the environment, but its threat to our time, sanity, and intellectual positions is clear and present. Like any researcher in an archive or a student in their favorite library, the moment all of us began using the internet for our work, study, or daily questions, we have all needed to refine our garbage filters. The arts of skimming, sorting, and analysis are combined with our most powerful weapon against garbage on the internet: the back button.
Of course, one researcher’s garbage, is another’s gold mine. The same, I think, can be said for some of the physical garbage we are filling our landfills and furnaces with. However, I’ll leave that question for another time. It is the many different ways of dealing with this physical garbage which has caught my interest of late…
My friend Hiroshi, returning from doing development work in Central America and staying with me on occasion, told me of the horrors of garbage disposal in those places where there is no organized collection and disposal system. He recounted the mountainsides filled with trash and the trash bags filling the rivers in the countryside, which are then merely covered in sand before becoming again the start of a new pile.
Growing up in Norway all I remember from the “end-user” disposal side was that we had recycling for paper products which we placed in a green wheeled container, to accompany the ominous black containers we would wheel down our driveway periodically for collection. I oddly don’t remember any garbage from my eight childhood years in Scotland. Maybe we didn’t have garbage in Scotland. Recycling and garbage collection as I remember it living in the US varied from place to place. My experience is also less representative since most of my six or so years of life in the US has been living in dormitories of one sort or another.
One of the surprises in store for those who have never lived in Tokyo before is this country’s own elaborate garbage collection system. First of all, the sites for collection are fixed and fewer in number than in Norway and the US. It is definitely not the case that everyone simply leaves garbage for collection outside their own home. Several apartment buildings can share a single location and several houses also share a location. I have found people here to be extremely protective of their areas. I had my garbage returned to me by the superintendent of a nearby apartment complex and told I had for months been using the “wrong” area for collection and would have to use the net some 20 meters in the other direction (they were the same distance from my cottage so I couldn’t care less which I used). Someone must have literally witnessed me taking my garbage out at 4:30 that morning, or have gone through the contents and determined that it belonged to the resident foreigner in the neighborhood. I believe there are probably at least two reasons for the extreme territorialization of garbage collection. One is so that it is easier to determine who is responsible for wrongly sorted garbage and thus by way of a mutual responsibility system keep people from disobeying the rules. The second is that someone is probably responsible or takes responsibility for cleaning garbage which were not totally covered by the net and gets mangled by the ravens. They probably also want to simply reduce the amount of garbage in their “section” of the street.
There is widespread use of nets instead of containers here (I can only guess that garbage cans are too big for the narrow roads) to prevent garbage from getting torn to pieces by Japan’s huge population of ravens (or crows or whatever they are). Each time I return to the US from Japan I am amazed to see “naked” bags of garbage on the streets of New York or elsewhere, which would undoubtedly have their contents spread across the pavement and street if left out in the Tokyo morning hours. One effecitve biological weapon attack on the US would be the clandestine importation of a small colony of the highly intelligent Japanese ravens.
My “section” has recently switched from a net to a collection of small containers, some “claimed” by certain families who have written their names on them (I use one of several unmarked containers but Claire reports that in Britain you are supplied with one measly small bin and anything which doesn’t fit will go uncollected). At night time these containers are nowhere to be seen, probably stored in some of the small apartments in my “section” across the street. Before this, I would often put the garbage out at 3:30-4:30 in the morning before going to bed, since when I woke between 9-11 the garbage would often have been already collected. This rarely goes unnoticed since my love of ice cream wakes me when I hear the truck pass playing a merry tune (Never in my childhood did I think the same signifier would come to represent both garbage and ice cream).
When I am on a more socially accepted night-sleep schedule, going to bed 23-1 (I alternate between the two sleeping patterns), I would simply take out the garbage in the morning, but now the limited morning availability of the containers in my section has forced me to rise in the morning with everyone else in my neighborhood, if but to drag out my garbage in a semi-somniferous state before again collapsing on my futon. I don’t complain though. Even though I have no power in this garbage regime, neither have I been given any responsibilities in it (such as washing the containers every few weeks or buying more etc.) other than to follow the guidelines on when to put out what garbage.
Ah yes, we come to Japan’s system of “burnable” and not “burnable” garbage. In my “section” on Mondays and Thursdays I am to take out garbage that can be burned, on Tuesdays we take out garbage that cannot be burned. Wednesdays we take out plastic bottles and containers, and Fridays we take out glass bottles, paper newspapers, and large or dangerous garbage items. There is also every Tuesday afternoon a truck that comes by to collect very large garbage such as refrigerators etc., some of which he charges money to recycle. This “big garbage man” also drives by playing its own special tune. This is not to be confused with the separate tune played by the dumpling man, the potato man, the bread man (spotted in Yokohama), and the local police patrol who reminds parents to keep their children from playing out too late. Some neighborhoods also have the music and/or announcements at 17 for children to go home and study or get dinner. Then there is of course the music and speeches when the neighborhood is visited by every local candidate for office (it seems the more desperate for votes, the louder their speakers) when some local position is up for grabs.
At any rate, the vast array of passing music and announcements aside, most of the categories of garbage are reasonable and seem to imply an elaborate system of recycling. The burnable and non burnable distinction is very complicated though. Plenty of things which burn at the light of a match or in a furnace are considered not burnable. I assume this is because they give off nasty chemicals but if that is a concern, a lot of things that are considered burnable do so as well. My chart (in Japanese and English) supplied by my local city government is of some help but is hardly exhaustive.
Sayaka discovered that the Taiwanese garbage regime has its own interesting idiosyncrasies. I got to witness it myself when I visited the last two weeks. At around 18 and 21 in the evening for her neighborhood the residents of the neighborhood begin to assemble along the street outside their apartments. They all cary their (unsorted) garbage and await the garbage truck which will slowly drive past. The system is of course, compatible with both of my sleeping schedules but no one is allowed to leave their garbage for collection. Instead, they all gather and must wait to dump their bags on the truck themselves as it passes. This results in plenty of opportunities for socializing amongst the neighbors and a chance to confront overly reclusive residents. Sayaka’s American friend at ICLP is apparently bombarded with questions by his neighbors while Sayaka, who looks Taiwanese, is less often accosted. She also tells me that apparently parents can sometimes discover that their daughters are in love with a local neighborhood boy by taking note of any unusually frequent volunteering to take the garbage out.
For those who don’t participate in the evening social garbage ritual, there are in fact a number of trash cans along the streets of Taipei where many can be seen squeezing their garbage bags through its small hole. These are labeled “For Pedestrians Only” and apparently this warning is enforced. When I was walking down the street one morning I witnessed an old man ride past a garbage can on his bicycle. Stopping clumsily, he squeezed a small bag of garbage into the garbage can. Just as I passed, witnessing this, a man leapt off of the bench to the right of me (neither the garbage can or bench would exist on most of the streets of Tokyo, which has virtually none of either provided in public places) and yelled at the man while flashing some kind of official ID. I couldn’t understand his crazed shouting but I imagine it was something like, “Freeze! Garbage Police!” I watched in fascination as the young garbage cop lectured the old man, who bowed his head low and listened quietly. I didn’t stick around to see if the old man was fined, but considering the fact that eating or drinking on the subway in Taipei can get you a $1,500 Taiwanese dollar fine, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was slapped with a hefty amount for his blatant misuse of the public garbage can.
I am still grateful there are garbage cans at all in Taipei. In the park near my cottage here in Tokyo, signs and regular announcements blaring from speakers along park trails remind all those who come to take their garbage home to keep the park clean. There are no garbage cans, that I know of, in the entire park, something I have not seen in any other major city park I have been to in any other country. Many Tokyo residents take advantage of the fact that convenience stores (which are great enough in number in Tokyo to make their trash cans almost as frequent as those on the streets of other major cities) have garbage cans outside. However, I have had my garbage, which I dumped in the trash of a convenience store that had closed for the night returned to me by a panting convenience store worker who ran up behind me, “This is yours, I believe?” Train stations usually have garbage cans, but subways generally do not (since, I believe, the Sarin poison gas attack some years ago). Shibuya has a few public trash cans but these are constantly overflowing with garbage, which I think is why there are more ravens in Shibuya at 6 in the morning than there are sleezy black suited pimps and other night life employees scouring its streets at night. Incidentally, one of these friendly fellows literally threatened to kill me yesterday when I pointed out a non-smoking sign to him, and asked him politely not to smoke within the train station. My first death threat in Tokyo!
Well, enough for now, I’ll go gather my burnable garbage and put it in a burnable (?) plastic bag. Or should I perhaps put the plastic bag out on Wednesday, which is plastic container day?