Stage three of rubbish reform

Back in July I posted about the changes in the rubbish collection procedures in our city. This October we're moving into stage three: plastic bags that we have to pay for to dispose our rubbish in.

Today we received an information packet and four sample bags. Different colours for different types of rubbish. From the left: 

• Plastic rubbish (except hard, thick plastic), 
• Burnable rubbish (
• Unburnable rubbish (most of the stuff that doesn't go in the other two like aerosol cans, 
• Smaller version (5L) of the burnable rubbish bags.

Other rubbish apparently doesn't go in bags, like tins, PET bottles, batteries, glass. I'll have to get clarification on those. Clean paper rubbish goes out in paper bags, it doesn't look like we have to use special ones for it.

The bags won't be very expensive. With a large, hungry household, the most expensive two below are probably the ones we'll use the most: 40L bags for plastic and burnable rubbish. 80 yen and 40 yen per bag respectively. They'll be bought in rolls of 10.

It all came with a list of all the stores where these rolls could be bought. A lot of stores! Interestingly, though, we can't see our main grocery store on the list.

Shaming cleans up our city?

Tomorrow is the first day of a new system of rubbish collection in our city. Up till last October all rubbish was put out at community rubbish stations. Some of these were really badly positioned (like on the road). And some got quite messy, like the one below.

I took this photo today while on our way to church. It used to have green, blue, and pink bins in it like the photo below, but these were removed in October. Alas someone or some people aren't following the rules.

Last October our city (Higashi Kurume) began a transition to all rubbish being collected from in front of your house. Tomorrow is the first day that all rubbish (except milk cartons and styrofoam) are collected from in front of your house.

My curious boys wondered about this: "Why?" I asked a Japanese friend and she didn't hesitate before saying, "Shame." 

She went on to explain that if you put out the wrong rubbish or if the crows get into it, it is clear whose responsibility it is to clean it up. They also might be hoping to reduce the amount of rubbish put out by people. Tokyo, like most big cities, has the nightmare of rubbish disposal with little space. She also wondered, out loud, if people might be inclined not to drink so much as a pile of beer cans outside your house is also potentially embarrassing.

This is what a community rubbish disposal centre used to look like. These colour-coded bins are all gone now.

I wonder if Australians would yield to such tactics? 

I did show her a video of our wheelie bins and she was intrigued. Those get smelly too, but at least household rubbish is generally not strewn along the road as can happen here. Yes, I know, Japan has the reputation for being clean and tidy and not without reason, it generally is. Shame is a big motivating factor in keeping your little corner of the city clean.

There are two other changes in rubbish collection. They've reorganised the schedule, David kindly created a nice little chart for the side of our fridge.

From October rubbish disposal will cost us too, we'll have to buy three types of pre-printed  bags to put our rubbish in.

Signs and rubbish

Some of the signs we put up. Telling you you must put your PTA number
on the goods you donate (two on the left) and listing the things the money
made from Thrift Shop has been used for in the past (two on the right).

I'm feeling exhausted after a full day of helping with the school's Thrift Shop (garage sale). Yesterday afternoon/evening we set up the bare bones of the shop, meaning all the tables, clothes racks, and signs. It's the last of those that is my main job. Signs and rubbish. These two things are the main responsibility of me and another mum.

This is what the gym looked like yesterday after we'd finished setting up
the tables etc. Today we started filling those tables and racks. When I left
 after 6 tonight there wasn't much white space left.

We have hundreds of signs. No kidding! We have signs to tell you where you can put your stuff and where you can't, when you can put your stuff there and when you can't. We have signs to tell you where you can put other people's stuff and where you can't. There are signs about what sort of stuff you can put there and what you can't. We have signs for volunteers and visitors, members and non-member. Signs for cars and carts, rubbish and non-rubbish. Signs for calculating and sorting, pricing and tossing. Signs about entering and exiting, signs about staying and going. Signs for sections and subsections and sub-sub-sections. Well, maybe the last one is an exaggeration.

Yesterday evening we put up a lot of signs, maybe more than half of them. Today I've periodically heard my name together with the word "sign" mentioned. I tried to run away when that happened but they usually found me and wanted me to find another sign in the black hole that contains our signs. 

The problem with Thrift Shop is that there are lots of people helping. That's a blessing too: otherwise this would not be possible. But the problem with lots of people helping is that things don't always go as planned, so there can be inefficiency. Someone does something wrong that needs fixing up by someone else later. Someone doesn't know there is a sign for something, so makes one, and we therefore end up with multiple signs. Someone tells someone else to do something and then someone else tells someone else to do it differently. Yes, it happens. Just yesterday I had about four or five people tell me to do the same thing, something I'd already done.

The problem with signs is that they're out there for anyone to work with, so they often get put in places that are hard for someone else to find, even in the files that are supposed to be organised, but are hard to keep as such because so many people can access them.

These are, however, the prices we pay for working with many volunteers and at a speed that inevitably produces exhaustion and inaccuracies.

Then there's rubbish. Mostly consisting of plastic bags and damaged or dirty clothes. These seemed to multiply faster than rabbits. Both of us were picking and sorting up bags of rubbish from around the gym at regular intervals throughout the day.

At one of the two entrances. There are two ways to give goods to
Thrift Shop: as a donation (all the money goes to CAJ but the
volunteers on Wednesday have to price all the items
ourselves) or as a "tagged item" which means the donators have
to price everything themselves and the volunteers on Wednesday
and Thursday have only to sort and put everything out on the floor
in the appropriate places. But the "donors" get a percentage of
the sale price back if their goods sell before Saturday.
The white signs are about what you cannot sell at Thrift Shop.

On top of that I helped supervise students from PE and home ec classes who came to help sort, price, fold, hang, arrange, carry, wheel, and distribute goods to their correct place in the gym. You see this is a highly organised process and where most things go is well documented with signs!

In th midst of all this I managed to have fun talking to people. Three of us had a spirited discussion about the fact that two of us think we're ENFP (Myers-Briggs), but there are some significant differences in our personalities. I worked and chatted with another friend who also brought me coffee when she heard that I'd been awake for more than an hour during the night (my mind didn't shut down so well last night, I had signs running through my thoughts). I had lots of little fun exchanges as I worked alongside people.

But now I've run out of words and bed beckons. Because there will be more signs tomorrow. And more rubbish too.

People-filled days

This friend, Jenn, ran the prayer meeting yesterday morning and was also
one of the friends I enjoyed dinner with last night.

I spent all day Thursday behind my desk. I got a lot of good stuff done, but was sick of my own company by the end of the day. In contrast yesterday and today have been people-filled days.

Yesterday morning I went to the school's weekly community prayer meeting, it just goes for an hour and is usually a good time to worship and pray for what's going on at school. We had a good dozen or more parents there. 

After that I went home and had a Skype chat with my life-long friend Mel. It was great to catch-up about some challenges each of us have been facing. 

Then I spent some time dealing with email that had come in overnight and did my usual Friday grocery run for perishables. 

One of the now-defunct community rubbish bins.
I won't be sad to see these rusty old things go.

I also tried to do my civic duty of bin-cleaning. It's a fortnight once a year when we are supposed to "clean" the community bin around the corner. I've never seen anyone else actually do it, so I guess at what I'm supposed to do with the disinfectant, bucket, and scrubbing broom that we get given by our neighbour each year in mid-September. I usually fill the bucket with water on the days that we have "burnable" rubbish collection (it is the smelly rubbish: food scraps, etc), spray some disinfectant into the bin, "scrub" a little and then throw water in there. 

Yesterday the bin was taped shut. From next week the system changes. From next week we have to provide our own bin (or use a bin provided by the local government, but we missed applying for that). That's a big change! Not unwelcome, not just because we will no longer have to take turns cleaning it but because it means the bulky metal bins will get taken off the streets. We currently have to "dodge" these bins while driving (or walking) on our street, there's no footpath to put them on and they sit out on the road. 

At 2pm I enjoyed introducing two couple friends to each other. Both are UK-connected and have kids at CAJ, a relative rarity at the school. It was great to be able to facilitate them meeting up. 

Then I shot off to take our middle son for his last braces-maintenance appointment. That's right, next time they come off! Yippee. 

Then last night I went out with some other local mum-friends for some fun without our kids. 

It was a pretty busy day, but enjoyable too. I wasn't sure about going out in the evening (I've been quite tired in the evening this week) but David told me it would be good for me! And it was, we had a lot of laugh-out-loud fun.

Then our family had an early start this morning for cross country again, with lots of people-time. I travelled down and back with friends. Actually we spent more time travelling than watching racing. It was a small meet today with most high schoolers not coming for various reasons (they had their races on Thursday). Today I met another "foreign" mum from eighth grade. She works in an international university amongst mainly Japanese men. She was thrilled to meet another foreigner! A reminder to me of how important it is to be open to new friends. Us expats do need to support one another. Japan can be a challenging place to live. 

After we got back David and I went out to get some bits and pieces (including a new bin to put our rubbish in on Tuesday) and for a date. Then we went to collect our youngest son from a birthday party and ended up ferrying almost all the kids back to the train station afterwards (two trips in our eight-seater van).

I think some of my malaise earlier in the month was me not only being a tiny bit bored but also resisting the idea of putting effort into relationships that, in all probability, will be shorter-term rather than longer-term. But I've realised that I simply can't succumb to that temptation. The pain of not investing in friendships is worse than the pain of having friends and having to let them go. 

Well I've certainly had my fill of people-time these last 36 hours! Now for some rest. I only got about six hours last night, I generally need at least an hour longer than that!

Rubbish disposal

I often seem to talk about rubbish here...the disposal of it! It is a big part of life in Japan, as some of you who played our Gomi Game in Australia would already know. 

Our boys are drinking tonnes of milk. Because I haul it all
home on my bike about three times a week it seems
more than they drank in Australia, but it probably isn't.
Probably about 2-3L a day.

Our youngest son is in charge of taking the general bags of rubbish to our local rubbish station on his way to school. I think he took four bags this morning: burnable (full of food scraps etc) and bags of non-burnable rubbish, all separated. I think there may have been a general bag, plus a bag of batteries, or glass. Actually I'm not really sure as David did that.

I had my own rubbish disposal duties today. I took the washed and cut-up milk/juice/cream cartons to a local grocery store to put in their special bins (there aren't any at our local rubbish station). As I was early there weren't many people around and I didn't feel too self conscious about snapping some photos.

This is the bank of specific rubbish bins at the shop. From the left:
cans, cartons, styrofoam trays, food packs (which I think is the same
as styrofoam trays), and PET bottles. No tossing just anything
into these!

Here are the instructions of what to do with your milk/juice/cream
cartons after you've used the contents.

Community cleaning roster

This last fortnight we've had a rostered cleaning job for our block. This is an annual job and involves keeping an eye on our block's rubbish collection spot. However it usually is very clean. 

Different types of rubbish is put there in plastic bags for collection on four days a week. Tuesdays and Fridays are the messiest rubbish, with "burnable" rubbish up for collection. This includes food scraps. 

Clean plastics, bottles, cans, recyclable paper etc are collected on other days, but don't cause much mess. 

Tomorrow we get to hand the bucket, brooms, and disinfectant on to our neighbour for their two-week turn. I'm relieved. As is often the case in Japan, I'm never truly sure I'm doing all the expected things the right way. And rarely does anyone spell it out thoroughly.

This is the list of all the house owners for the block.
The roster of who does which
months and it's attached to the end of the broom that
is passed from house to house.

Today when I went to do any necessary cleaning, the lady whose property adjoins the bins was sweeping her road gutters. Her house is only about a meter from the bins, I can see why we're on a roster, otherwise it would be a very undesirable place to live. She thanked me for cleaning, though I didn't actually clean at that time because the truck hadn't yet collected the rubbish. 

This isn't the exact rubbish station that we clean, but you can
see the fence separating the house from the rubbish station.

Sort your rubbish?

Today has been more planning for presentations. Boring stuff to write about on a blog, really!

Rubbish collection station around the corner from
our house in Tokyo.

The fun thing was talked about over lunch, however, was an idea we've had for some time but haven't had time to put it into action. Aside from talking in front of groups of people in formal-type situations, sometimes we get the opportunity to do some more interactive things with groups. These are so much fun! In the past we've done slipper relays, chopsticks challenges, origami, a Japanese receipt game, and a language learning activity. 

This time we want to do a Rubbish Sorting Game. Sorting the rubbish in Japan is complex but a game based on this has the potential to make a fun activity to give people a feeling of culture shock. It's just that there are so many ways we could do it. We've been bandying around ideas for months now, but not gotten very far.

We talked in more detail over lunch about it today, though, and David's actually written some things down. Perhaps we'll make some progress on this soon?

It certainly takes our mind off the internet troubles that we continue to experience. Today we were supposed to have someone come, supposedly to "connect us up", but it didn't happen. The "outside team" that would make sure there was a connection that came from the street (as far as I understand it) didn't show up so the technician that did had nothing to connect up to. 

And so we continue to wait. But we're not in too bad a way, as long as we can continue to use this mobile internet out the back in our "patio office" it works pretty well and decreases the incentive to work at night-time when it's coolish out here.

Too much packaging

Can you see the over wrapping on this chicken
that I bought? It is vacuum packed, then
cling-wrapped into a styrofoam tray.

Japanese packaging often seems to be overdone. If you buy a packet of biscuits, chances are that when you open them you'll find the biscuits in separate packets inside the outside wrapper. We don't buy many of those kinds of packets, but still we seem to throw away an awful lot of plastic rubbish each week.

The plastic (pura) rubbish is separate from the wet/dirty rubbish like food scraps, so it gives you hope that they are recycling it. See this post for the symbol that tells you if plastic belongs in the "plastic rubbish", note that this is a different category to PET bottles. 

I really don't know what they do with the large amounts of plastic wrapping rubbish people throw out each week.

It's not just that they overwrap, the portions are small. Our family
goes through two of these frozen veggie packets a night.  

However, according to this article, Japan is one of the best plastic recyclers in the world:

This is about as large as the yoghurt comes in Japan: 400g. 

At 77%, Japan's plastic recycling rate is about twice that of the UK, and well above the 20% figure for the US, which still depends largely on landfill, according to institute spokesman Takushi Kamiya. One major driver has been the lack of space for landfill close to crowded and sprawling metropolitan areas.

This took less than a week to accumulate:
our plastic recycling rubbish.

But the same article does admit this:

Japan's plastic recycling operation would be easier if manufacturers reduced the amount of wrapping they use, said Kevin Carroll, representative director of EA International, an environmental and engineering risk management consultancy in Tokyo. 

"Japan differs from other countries in that it tends to overwrap," Carroll said. "You buy a bento boxed lunch and it comes in a plastic box with a lid, and then it's put into a plastic bag. Lots of other foodstuffs are the same. (My bolding.) 

Japan Photo #36 Answer

Finally here's the answer to Japan Photo #36.

This came off the English-language
rubbish-disposal instructions. The "Here
is the mark" is a bit mysterious in its
placement.

Deb came the closest with "it looks like something to do with recycling".

The Japanese letters read "pura" short for the English
"plastic". It denotes that the product it is on can be put into the "pura" rubbish for recycling.

It is everywhere, and evidence that we've lived here too long is that I almost didn't consider it as a candidate for this Photo Quiz!

Here it is on a rice packet.

In white on a Milo packet.

And here it is on a Nutella bottle. The words next to it lets us know that we can put both the bottle and the lid into the "pura" rubbish.

Answer to Photo Question #28

I asked you a couple of days ago if you could guess where I'd acquired this plastic basket? No one came close. 

I found this as I walked home from CAJ one day. It was sitting on top of some other new-looking items in a rubbish pile! It is a little hard to see here, but there is a paper sticker in the basket. This convinces me that almost certainly this as never been used.

Missionaries who've been here longer than us talk about the "old days" when large rubbish was frequently put out on the road for collection. Many a missionary home has been supplemented by other people's "rubbish" collected off the streets. It happens rarely these days in the city. Governments have become strict about large rubbish, that's another blog post, but basically people don't usually leave large pieces of rubbish out anymore. It was quite a surprise to find this.

Stuff you throw out

Rubbish, trash, garbage, gomi. We have various names for it. We have various ways of disposing of it, depending on where you live. A fellow missionary in Japan has written lots about it on her blog. My husband insisted it needed to be included as an aspect of re-entry shock. In Tokyo we had a complicated system of rubbish sorting and collection and it differs from area to area around the metropolis. The city council even gave out free calendars informing us of the days we got to put out our rubbish. That is because it is easy to get confused. Mondays: Plastic recyclable rubbish (which has "Pura" written on the side of it) in grey semi-clear bags. Tuesdays: Burnable rubbish in blue bags you buy from the local shop. Also the day for batteries, cans, bottles, aerosols and other dangerous items. Wednesdays: Second of the month was unburnable rubbish (not including the above mentioned 'dangerous items') in orange bags from the local shop. First and third weeks were PET bottles (excluding lids). Thursdays: Second and fourth were paper and clothing (except if it was raining and it was surprising how often that happened). Fridays: Burnable rubbish in blue bags. Certain things were not admissible to curb pick-up. They included furniture and things too big to fit in the bags. To have these removed, you had to call a number and pay a fee to have them picked up. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Until you think about something as simple as changing toothbrushes. The old toothbrush goes into 'unburnable', the new toothbrush is removed from its cardboard and plastic packaging. The cardboard obviously goes into 'paper', but I could never remember whether the plastic was 'plastic' or 'unburnable' - I had to check the packaging. Space is so tight around Tokyo that you have to be careful about where you put your garbage. One of the important things we were told by our real estate agent, when we signed the lease, was exactly where to put our garbage. Our spot was on the very corner of our block as it connected with the road. You can see our car park in the picture, the car in the centre of the picture. The bin went at the front right hand corner of the car. Parking was so tight that if our small bin was out for collection I had to move it to park the car. You would think that it'd be a relief to come to Brisbane and find there was only two different types. But instead we feel like we're breaking rules. How can we put all these different 'types' of garbage into the same bin? Habits are hard to break. At least we can back the car in and out without having to shift the bin!