Where does the garbage go? We need to recycle more..

Interesting story in the news today about Japanese style recycling. Read the full article in the New York Times if you register or the short version on the UPI newswire

Sarasota has a pretty good recycling program but there is still lots more that could easily be done. I think there are great opportunities to be had finding uses for "used" materials.

I apologize to the New York Times if I copied too much but this was really good. We will never be like the Japanese but we should try to find a "Sarasota Way" to work this problem... Read the last sentence it says a lot ... leadership will help us solve problems.. of course us worker bees are the ones that sort the trash..

"To Americans struggling with sorting trash into a few categories, Japan may provide a foretaste of daily life to come. In a national drive to reduce waste and increase recycling, neighborhoods, office buildings, towns and megalopolises are raising the number of trash categories - sometimes to dizzying heights.

Indeed, Yokohama, with 3.5 million people, appears slack compared with Kamikatsu, a town of 2,200 in the mountains of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. Not content with the 34 trash categories it defined four years ago as part of a major push to reduce waste, Kamikatsu has gradually raised the number to 44.

In Japan, the long-term push to sort and recycle aims to reduce the amount of garbage that ends up in incinerators. In land-scarce Japan, up to 80 percent of garbage is incinerated, while a similar percentage ends up in landfills in the United States.
......
One of the most tenacious around here is Mitsuharu Taniyama, 60, the owner of a small insurance business who drives around his ward every morning and evening, looking for missorted trash. He leaves notices at collection sites: "Mr. So-and-so, your practice of sorting out garbage is wrong. Please correct it."

"I checked inside bags and took especially lousy ones back to the owners' front doors," Mr. Taniyama said.

He stopped in front of one messy location where five bags were scattered about, and crows had picked out orange peels from one.

"This is a typical example of bad garbage," Mr. Taniyama said, with disgust. "The problem at this location is that there is no community leader. If there is no strong leader, there is chaos."