Sunday, July 20, 2008

Japan Creates a Zero-Waste Community

One of the most encouraging pieces of news in a long time has been this report from the BBC about the little town of Kamikatsu in Japan, the world's first zero-waste community: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7502071.stm The little agricultural community cannot throw any of its waste away and it has to compost all food waste and recycle all other waste by segregating it into one of 34 different categories. The mayor of Kamikatsu has, in doughty fashion, invited world leaders to learn from his community's ways and, indeed, the rest of the world has much to learn from his example. In typical Japanese fashion, this community has a brilliant idea which the rest of the world could implement after modifying it to its own ends.

Now, will anyone else take this challenge up? Let's see how far this goes . . .

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