The Fukushima city authorities have introduced regulations under which they will be able to disclose on the Internet the names of people who do not segregate waste in accordance with the regulations. The city mayor sees nothing wrong with it.
The Japanese city council of Fukushima adopted strict waste separation regulations on Tuesday. According to the BBC, waste segregation in… Japan is taken very seriously. In Fukushima, the city's waste management services no longer collect bags of poorly sorted garbage. Employees usually put stickers on them informing them about violations of regulations. In such a situation, residents must take the bags back and sort the garbage again. Under newly adopted regulations, if they remain unsorted for a week, city workers can identify their owners. Violators will receive a verbal warning, followed by a written warning, and ultimately their names will be published on the government website. The regulations are to apply from March.
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“A burden on future generations”
Last year, 9,000 cases of illegal waste disposal were recorded in Fukushima. – Wrong waste disposal is a serious problem because it worsens the living conditions of residents – we can read in a statement for the BBC of the Waste Reduction Promotion Department in Fukushima. The city's mayor, Hiroshi Kohata, told the station that he sees nothing wrong with disclosing the names of people who dispose of waste illegally. – There is nothing illegal about publicizing waste producers who do not follow the rules and do not follow the city's guidelines and advice – he said.
Already in the 1990s, the Japanese authorities set themselves the goal of moving away from landfills, reducing the amount of waste and promoting recycling. The local waste disposal law is one of the strictest in the world. The BBC cites the example of the city of Kamikatsu, whose inhabitants sort their waste into 45 categories, and the prefectural authorities have obliged them to write their names on garbage bags. Last year, a pilot program was carried out in the city of Chiba, which – using artificial intelligence – was intended to help residents properly dispose of waste.
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