Accelerating Circular Economy with RECOTECH’s GOMiCO app

Based on data from fiscal year 2016, the Ministry of the Environment announced that landfill sites in Japan may be exhausted by 2040. Currently, the recycling rate for general waste in Japan remains around 20%, ranking it 29th among the 34 OECD member countries, which is an alarmingly low position. Given Japan’s limited land area, most of the waste is incinerated and then buried. In fact, 70% of the world’s incinerators are concentrated in Japan.

Furthermore, Japan had been exporting its waste to various Asian countries. But starting with China’s ban on the import of plastic waste in 2018, many Southeast Asian nations, including Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam, have subsequently tightened their regulations on waste imports. As a result, Japan’s waste is increasingly left without a destination.

Recotech is taking on the challenge of solving the waste problem at its root by establishing a system that transforms waste into new resources. With the concept of “Turning Waste into Resources through Technology,” Recotech operates three core businesses: waste management consulting, sales of environmental products, and technology development.

Recotech has been handling waste management at the outdoor music festival “ap bank fes,” organized by musician Takeshi Kobayashi and artist Kazutoshi Sakurai, since its early days. Additionally, Recotech runs many unique projects, such as transforming food waste from school lunches into energy and fertilizer using compact biogas units, and creating “Resource Rice Garbage Bags” from surplus rice. These demonstrate Recotech’s innovative and hands-on approach.

Sitting down with Recotech’s CEO, Mamoru Nozaki, and Ryosuke Arai, an expert in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), we discussed Recotech’s newly developed waste visualisation app “GOMiCO,” designed to accelerate the circular economy.

Making waste visible as the first step

Nozaki, who has been involved in the waste management industry for many years, believes that today’s economic activities are focused primarily on the linear supply chain, from production to sales, resulting in a lack of transparency around waste disposal and severe problems with waste collection.

Nozaki: “Currently, waste is either buried, burned, or illegally dumped. To change this situation, it is essential to make waste visible at the point of disposal, as producer responsibility alone is limited in its effectiveness.”

Recognizing the importance of visualizing waste to address waste issues, Nozaki launched “GOMiCO,” a new project using a dedicated application to collect and visualize waste data, through his work in waste consulting.

Nozaki: “GOMiCO enables businesses like restaurants to log information about the quantity and types of waste being discarded. By using this app, businesses can visualize their daily waste, which helps them understand where unnecessary waste occurs, thereby contributing to waste reduction.”

By using GOMiCO, businesses can accurately grasp when and what kind of waste they are discarding. Visualising the current situation helps identify inefficiencies within operations, leading to cost reductions. Moreover, visualizing waste not only benefits the businesses generating the waste but also contributes to resource circulation by sharing waste information across communities and society as a whole, which lines up with Recotech’s broader vision.

A mapping app to achieve Circular Economy

GOMiCO is linked with the Material Pool System (MPS), a cloud-based platform that consolidates all recorded waste data. MPS gathers the waste data entered in GOMiCO, including type, quantity, and time of occurrence, and then maps it for easy visualisation.

Nozaki: “To truly reduce waste, it is not enough to simply produce efficiently. We need to visualize waste that has become unnecessary and reuse it as a resource. By converting the amount and location of waste into data, we can optimize the timing of its collection and create opportunities to reuse materials that would otherwise be discarded. This cycle is key to solving the waste problem.”

By visualizing the volume of waste by category, excessive production becomes evident, allowing companies to produce just what is needed, when it is needed, thereby supplying goods without surplus. Reducing overproduction helps avoid the creation of unnecessary waste, contributing to the reduction of overall waste. Through GOMiCO, waste can be circulated as a resource, making the realisation of a circular economy possible.

Is plastic the villain? Importance of a holistic view

In recent years, many products have come under scrutiny for their overproduction and overuse. Plastic being a prime example. A common, extreme argument is that we should simply stop using environmentally harmful materials. However, plastic now plays an indispensable role in our lives. Arai emphasised that it is crucial to consider both the collection and disposal of products alongside their production.

Arai: “Plastics offer excellent functionality, and it is difficult to simply say we should stop using them. For instance, plastic containers are lighter than those made of other materials, resulting in lower environmental costs during transport, and they also have superior food preservation capabilities. Using paper bags instead of plastic may accelerate food spoilage, leading to an increase in food waste. Instead of just banning plastic, it’s vital to develop effective recycling and reuse mechanisms. This holistic perspective is what we call ‘overall optimisation.’”

Certainly, achieving overall optimisation is no simple task. While plastic bags are being phased out in many places, Arai pointed out that in some municipalities, plastic bags used for disposing of household waste also serve as a combustion aid for incinerating wet waste, which is otherwise challenging to burn. Even the much-maligned plastic bags play a role in the incineration process.

Composting may disrupt nitrogen cycles?

Nozaki also highlighted that simply discarding food waste into compost isn’t necessarily a complete solution.

Nozaki: “Japan imports a large portion of its food and animal feed. If all discarded food and organic waste were composted and returned to Japanese soil, the nitrogen accumulated from fertilizers would be released into the soil, resulting in excess nitrogen, which may harm the local environment. We likely cannot merge the cycle of chemical fertilizers, which have been produced to support a growing global population, with natural cycles. Therefore, we need to leverage technology to take a comprehensive view and create an overall optimisation plan.”

Although composting food waste is often encouraged as an eco-friendly practice, Nozaki warned that from the perspective of overall optimisation, it is not always the best approach. Given the current state of Japan’s food self-sufficiency, these structural issues must also be taken into consideration when discussing solutions to waste management. Thus, taking a holistic approach and always keeping overall optimisation in mind are necessary when dealing with waste issues.

Addressing dilemmas in waste issues require collective cooperation

To overcome the barriers inherent in approaches that focus on partial optimisation, GOMiCO offers a visualisation tool to achieve overall optimisation. However, Nozaki admitted that the challenge remains in convincing users to register their waste without immediate economic benefits.

Nozaki: “Some high-minded companies share our philosophy and cooperate, but the numbers are few and far between. The current situation is such that recycling often costs more than discarding, and few are motivated to change the system fundamentally. However, I am confident that if enough people use GOMiCO and if a large dataset is collected, cost advantages will surely follow.”

Looking ahead, Nozaki envisions a world where the sources of all resources are made visible, logistics are optimized with the use of data, and recycling costs are minimized. Even if it does not benefit individual companies immediately, collective participation can lead to shared advantages. This, Nozaki said, is the essence of GOMiCO. The value that can be generated depends on how many people can share the same vision.

Ultimately, companies doing the right thing will survive

Currently, only a few companies and organisations are truly aware of the importance of properly disposing of waste. However, Nozaki, who has worked with numerous companies in the waste industry for many years, noted that the companies that have survived over time are those that have consistently invested in responsible waste disposal, even when it was not apparent to the consumer.

“Waste is something that consumers don’t see, and it costs money to deal with. It may seem like there’s no benefit to managing it properly. However, companies that have done the right thing, even when it wasn’t visible to consumers, have continued to grow, whereas those that did not are no longer succeeding,” said Nozaki.

He explained that companies that were cautious about China’s environmental issues and the state of plastic recycling facilities were able to continue their business without disruption after China’s plastic waste import ban. They chose not to be swayed by high buyback prices and instead established a stable domestic disposal system.

Ignoring externalities and only focusing on self-interest will inevitably lead to paying the price later. Nozaki’s insight, grounded in his years of experience in the waste industry, is highly persuasive.

Nozaki: “Waste issues are riddled with dilemmas, and there are no clear answers. That’s why it’s essential for everyone to cooperate. First, we need to keep overall optimisation in mind, understand the path humanity has taken, and move forward together. We can’t solve anything by villainizing others. I want us to work in harmony toward better solutions.”

Post-interview notes

GOMiCO is an application that records waste data, and by using MPS to collect individual-level data and map it, overall optimisation can be achieved. By utilizing this system, materials that were previously discarded as waste can be reused efficiently and systematically as resources, offering an innovative solution to waste management.

Nozaki and Arai, experts deeply knowledgeable about waste, shared a hopeful vision. The GOMiCO project is still in its early stages, and they are currently seeking partners to collaborate. Those interested in advancing their efforts toward a circular economy are encouraged to work with Recotech.

Originally published on IDEAS FOR GOOD.