Kamikatsu is a unique city that does not leave trash behind

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Many have heard stories about individual people who manage to live without leaving trash after themselves, but so that the whole city? level.

In the city of Kamikatsu, you cannot see trash cans - all because the residents of this city do not leave garbage in our usual plastic bags: instead of putting all the waste together, residents diligently sort out lids, jars, plastic, paper - in general, all-all garbage in 34 (!) different categories. Residents then bring the sorted waste to the recycling center on their own, where workers check for excess items in the garbage and empty it into large bins.

Naturally, the residents of the city did not immediately adapt to the new system, and not everyone agreed to fool themselves with such an outlandish attitude to ordinary garbage. However, since 2003, when this idea had just started to come true, today Kamikatsu residents perceive waste sorting as something ordinary and familiar.

Naturally, there are so many separate buckets that you can't find enough for modest Japanese dwellings, so residents of Kamikatsu distribute bags, boxes and trash cans throughout their residential area. And, accordingly, they try to avoid unnecessary garbage whenever possible. After all, absolutely everything must be sorted: the toothpaste tube goes into one package, and the tube cap goes into another; cans go to one container, and aluminum cans go to another; heavily worn clothes are folded separately from clothes that can still be worn or at least altered.

Each resident of Kamikatsu has a 27-page brochure detailing how to deal with garbage. In addition, in the recycling center, there are signs above each container that tell you what this or that waste will be recycled for, and why it was necessary to put it separately.

In addition to sorting garbage, there is a Kuru-kuru store in Kamikatsu, where residents leave individual items that they no longer need, and other residents can come and just take them, without money. Right there, women, mostly pensioners, alter "new" clothes, toys, bags from old clothes, flags and even fishing raincoats, in a word, something that can still be used. And you don't have to pay for that either.

The city of Kamikatsu has just over 1,700 residents, and 80% of their garbage is recycled, and the remaining 20% goes to fertilize in the fields. So we can say that this city manages to live without leaving trash and polluting nature. Only 13 years old, and the changes they have made are truly amazing. Schoolchildren from other cities are even brought here to show children how it is possible to solve such a serious problem if we act together. Moreover, specialists from all over the world come here to learn more about this system, which not only works, but also seems to be more and more justifying itself every year.

In this video, you can see how garbage is sorted in Kamikatsu, as well as hear the opinion of the residents of this city about this system:

Last year, on the other side of the world, in Holland, a 20-year-old boy found a way to clear the oceans of debris. And there is more than enough plastic waste in the waters of our planet. And what is remarkable, the way this young man suggested, an order of magnitude more effective and cheaper than all other expensive methods.