Electronic waste in Japan
Encyclopedia
Japan
has been a leader in technological advances for decades and now they are among the leaders in creating ways to deal with the resulting waste. Since 1970, Japan has been treating the waste of electronic materials differently than other materials. They would hire specially trained workers to dismantle and recycle the material. Unfortunately, the cost grew too great to keep these workers around. Instead, electronic waste was treated as every other form of waste, and tossed into a giant landfill
. Waste landfills are a huge problem for any country and in Japan it was no different.
Recently, two laws have come in effect in Japan to reduce both the landfill problem and the electronic waste
problem. The first law is the Law for the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources (LPUR). This law encourages manufacturers to voluntarily help with the recycling of goods and reducing the generation of the waste in general. The second law is the Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances (LRHA). This law imposes more obligations on the recycling efforts of both consumers and manufacturers of used home appliances. There are taxes that were instated after October, 2003 that made it so any computer purchased after that date had them. If a computer was purchased before that date, than those wanting to recycle their computer would pay a nominal fee to keep up with recycling costs.
The utilization of electronic waste resources is around 50% currently and is growing. The LRHA states that consumers are responsible for the cost of recycling most home appliances. This includes transportation costs, and recycling fees. The consumers pay the retailers who will pick it up and recycle it for them and the consumers pay the fees involved in that. In order to make this a somewhat fair system, if a consumer asks a retailer to take the used home appliance for any reason (most likely because they purchased a new appliance), the retailer is obligated to come pick it up. These retailers usually take it back to the manufacturer. The manufacturer is required to have a system in place to recycle this electronic waste, and this system must also maintain a certain percentage of utilization from these resources. There is a part of this process that is not regulated by the government. The process of acquiring a recycling facility and/or how the recycling is currently done. Manufacturers can hire anyone they want to create the facility and they can also recycle electronic waste in any way they deem possible. The only thing it must maintain is the amount of utilization from each material that comes into the facility. Unfortunately, this poses a problem because clearly the manufacturer wants to recycle the products in the cheapest way possible which leaves a lot of room for improvement.
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
has been a leader in technological advances for decades and now they are among the leaders in creating ways to deal with the resulting waste. Since 1970, Japan has been treating the waste of electronic materials differently than other materials. They would hire specially trained workers to dismantle and recycle the material. Unfortunately, the cost grew too great to keep these workers around. Instead, electronic waste was treated as every other form of waste, and tossed into a giant landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...
. Waste landfills are a huge problem for any country and in Japan it was no different.
Recently, two laws have come in effect in Japan to reduce both the landfill problem and the electronic waste
Electronic waste
Electronic waste, e-waste, e-scrap, or Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment describes discarded electrical or electronic devices. There is a lack of consensus as to whether the term should apply to resale, reuse, and refurbishing industries, or only to product that cannot be used for its...
problem. The first law is the Law for the Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources (LPUR). This law encourages manufacturers to voluntarily help with the recycling of goods and reducing the generation of the waste in general. The second law is the Law for the Recycling of Specified Kinds of Home Appliances (LRHA). This law imposes more obligations on the recycling efforts of both consumers and manufacturers of used home appliances. There are taxes that were instated after October, 2003 that made it so any computer purchased after that date had them. If a computer was purchased before that date, than those wanting to recycle their computer would pay a nominal fee to keep up with recycling costs.
The utilization of electronic waste resources is around 50% currently and is growing. The LRHA states that consumers are responsible for the cost of recycling most home appliances. This includes transportation costs, and recycling fees. The consumers pay the retailers who will pick it up and recycle it for them and the consumers pay the fees involved in that. In order to make this a somewhat fair system, if a consumer asks a retailer to take the used home appliance for any reason (most likely because they purchased a new appliance), the retailer is obligated to come pick it up. These retailers usually take it back to the manufacturer. The manufacturer is required to have a system in place to recycle this electronic waste, and this system must also maintain a certain percentage of utilization from these resources. There is a part of this process that is not regulated by the government. The process of acquiring a recycling facility and/or how the recycling is currently done. Manufacturers can hire anyone they want to create the facility and they can also recycle electronic waste in any way they deem possible. The only thing it must maintain is the amount of utilization from each material that comes into the facility. Unfortunately, this poses a problem because clearly the manufacturer wants to recycle the products in the cheapest way possible which leaves a lot of room for improvement.