What a load of rubbish

Officials in Tokyo are having a tough time getting residents to adopt translucent trash bags, a safer and more efficient means of garbage disposal.

WHEN Tokyo residents meet these days, they are likely to talk about three things: the economic recession, the erratic weather and the recent controversial switch to the use of translucent trash bags.

Now, residents in Tokyo are obliged to separate their garbage into burnable and non-burnable matter, with different days set aside each week for the collection of each variety of refuse. To speed up collection, they have to leave their garbage at specified neighbourhood collection points, rather than in front of their own homes.

Officials estimate that, at present, only about 10 per cent of the city’s residents are using approved semi-transparent bags to throw out their garbage, which is virtually no change from what was observed on Oct 1, the day the rule was first implemented.

Because a 3½-month grace period is in force, the low level of compliance is as yet of no major concern to Tokyo’s garbage disposal authorities, who believe their immediate task is to get people to understand the new policy.

As Governor Shunichi Suzuki admitted, a poor public relations effort was largely to blame for the initial protest. Much of the contusion arose over early news reports that garbage put out in no regulation bags would not be removed.

But despite denials by city officials, Tokyo residents seem to be in no particular hurry to comply with the new ruling.

Until the grace period expires on Jan 15 next year, they can still put their garbage in black plastic bags, cardboard boxes or the vinyl shopping bags left over from outings to the local supermarket.

With the use of either clear or semi-clear trash bags catching on in other parts of the country, Tokyo officials see no reason why residents here should not comply with the new ruling after the initial fuss dies down.

Last month, the city’s Public Cleansing Bureau, which is in charge of garbage disposal, received more than 600 telephone calls a day from people with either complaints or enquiries about the new ruling, not to mention the calls to its 44 branch offices around the city. The number of such calls has since dropped dramatically, with the bureau getting slightly more than 100 calls a day at present.

After Jan 15, Tokyo officials will take a dim view of the continued use of unauthorized containers, though what it can do to offenders is limited.

Tokyo residents complain that the translucent bags — at about 25 yen (36 Singapore cents) each —are up to 50 per cent more costly than existing black vinyl bags.

The city’s response has been to announce that it will distribute the new bags free of charge to some 49,000 households that depend on welfare.

As for the alleged shortage, it is expected to be solved once manufacturers switch over completely to producing the new bags by the end of the year.

Supermarkets are also likely to introduce translucent shopping bags for the convenience of their customers.

The city, however, has yet to respond to criticisms of its claim that the translucent bags, which contain calcium carbonate, give off less heat than existing black bags when burnt.

Though the material used for the semi-clear bags does indeed produce less calories gram-for-gram than black plastic, a television station here has demonstrated on the air that the translucent bags do not produce less heat as they are thicker than the older bags.

Whatever the case, some residents are simply not convinced that the translucent bags are a good idea.

"The city should make efforts to educate people about the garbage issue at the grassroots level. The use of translucent bags will not solve the disposal problem," said copywriter K. Moriguchi.

GARBAGE workers will not refuse to remove trash put out in non-regulation containers after the grace period runs out on Jan 15, but they will display requests for observance of the rules at collection points where such containers are found.

If that fails, officials say they will then assemble the households making use of a problem collection point and try face-to-face persuasion.

"As a last resort, we may try things such as not collecting offending trash bags," said Mr Yutaka Ozawa of Tokyo’s Public Cleansing Bureau.

But he is optimistic that such measures will not be necessary. Social group pressure, he believes, will do the trick most of the time.

A SMALL number of Tokyo residents had baulked at a request that they write their names on their translucent trash bags before throwing them out, claiming it was an invasion of privacy.

"We ask people to cooperate by writing their names on their bags in the hope that they will become more aware of the city’s serious garbage problem, be more diligent about separating burnable from non-burnable stuff and not throw something out if it can be recycled," said Mr Yutaka Ozawa of the city’s Public Cleansing Bureau.

"However, even if they do not comply, we will still haul away their trash," he said.

The privacy question seems to be a relatively minor one for most Japanese. In the northern Japanese city of Sendai, which required the use of fully-transparent trash bags from July 1991, 98 per cent of residents now reportedly comply with the ruling though most refuse to have their names on the bags.