Chisato ShizumeA small town in Kagoshima is increasing its efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Osaki town is located in the eastern Osumi Peninsula, the southern part of Kagoshima Prefecture. It faces the Pacific Ocean, has a little over 13,000 people, and its main industry is agriculture.
Generated waste in Osaki used to be brought to the landfill since the town has no incineration facility in its district. Gradually, a shortage of capacity rose over time. At this point, there seems to be nothing notable about this little town’s characteristics. But in reality, Osaki took advantage of its adversity and became the leading municipality in Japan for its recycling rate. Number one in Japan, not only for a year but for 12 consecutive years.
How is Osaki number one for such a long period? The answer is quite simple. Like many local authorities in Japan, Osaki had to face the landfill capacity problem. And because the town couldn’t incinerate waste, it decided to tackle this problem by sorting waste to prolong its landfill usage. Osaki established an original sorting method named ‘Osaki System,’ calling for a thorough garbage sorting to reduce waste and collaborating with businesses to advocate its initiative.
Of course, garbage sorting is not unusual in Japan, so it may sound odd that Osaki is doing so well by just working on garbage sorting. But it’s not just an ordinary garbage sorting because waste is sorted into 27 categories in Osaki to maximize recycling. And this steady effort began to appear in numbers gradually. In 1998, the town generated 4,382 tons of waste which was brought to landfill, and recycled only 35 tons. However, after implementing garbage sorting, the amounts of landfill waste and recycled waste reversed. In 2017, Osaki succeeded in reducing waste down to 708 tons and recycled as much as 3,187 tons. Now, Osaki’s recycling rate is over 83%, well over that of the national average in Japan, which is 20.4% (as of 2017).
While making a remarkable progress in solving its waste issues, Osaki is making another step forward by establishing a new council to promote SDGs. ‘Osaki SDGs Promotion Council’ will be launched in January 2021 to promote collaborations between Osaki and various businesses, begin demonstration experiments, and develop human resources. Osaki’s goal is to reduce plastic and achieve complete abolition of single-use containers by 2030. It aims to provide a beneficial alternative by 2024 and targets 80% penetration by 2027. Osaki also plans to set up a laboratory within its district to accept researchers and people from businesses. Osaki also wants to accelerate the circular economy, promote SDGs, make renewable energy, and build a new social system.
For the last 20 years, Osaki has appealed to its residents to recycle their waste by calling out ‘Garbage if mixed, resources if separated.’ Now after controlling its waste problem successfully, the small town in Kagoshima is moving on to the next stage, which is to contribute to the SDGs with the help of other sectors and the people of Osaki.
