Monday, October 06, 2008

Garbage separation and disposal

I found this poster in the lodge elevator the other day.
Since the new semester is starting, new students start to arrive to the lodge(which makes me a senpai!iyey!) and you can find a number of instructions about life in the lodge here and there.
This one shows the correct way to separate and dispose garbage.
I took a picture to keep as a reference, and I found out that I have a couple of small mistakes in the way I dispose my garbage^^;
Click on the picture for a larger version.



As everyone -hopefully- knows, garbage separation in Japan is very important. As a participant in the Environment Course of the Tokyo Discussion Session 2007 and as an environment enthusiastic, let me talk a bit about it.

Why separate?
Because garbage is recycled here.

What is recycling?
It means that garbage is taken to factories in order to process and re-make them into useful products.

Why recycle?

In countries with large populations like Japan, imagine what happens if you keep disposing garbage. Eventually, it will not be possible for disposal sites to accommodate the large amounts.. So recycling them and turning them into usable items instead of just disposing them helps a lot.

Then, again why separate?

To recycle waste, separation is needed. Take paper recycling for example. Paper is recycled to produce less-quality-but-still paper. If it was mixed with plastic for example, this process can't be done.

Why don't factories separate waste?
Factories receive your garbage in addition to the garbage of tens of millions of people other than you. This makes this process impossible on the factory side. That's why, a small effort in garbage separation on the individual side makes a great difference and benefits everyone.

Jordan?

There are recycling factories in Jordan. But I think paper and cans are the most recycled items. (Just a thought based on what I see, no information).
I brought samples of environmental brochures printed on Jordanian recycled paper to the discussion last year.
There is also this active Bio-gas project. (In short using the gases produced by wastes in landfills to produce energy).
Although there are separation activities and projects here and there(And there is one in J.U.S.T.), waste separation is still not imposed in Jordan.
Maybe recycling industry is still not advanced enough to benefit from the full separation process.
(For computer engineers to understand this : Imagine running a threaded process on a processor that doesn't support threads) :D

Why did I write this much?
lol
At first I just wanted to post the picture above, but before I knew it I found myself writing this much...

Now after you read this much, as a reward this is a video made by Kouki san about last year Environment Course.



I haven't seen this in a while so it brought back many memories..
I saw the professor(Kojima sensei) who was responsible about our course on a TV interview a week ago! I was surprised~

Anyway I hope somebody learns something new reading this post and not just DISPOSE it :)
4649!

Another post on garbage separation by Blue Rose san

5 comments:

Saemon 左衛門 said...

This photo is a nice catch! It is very informative and interesting so I understand why you just wanted to post it alone, but your additions are informative and 'educational' too. The green font for questions sealed the deal for me!

Good post Amani-san.

Biraru said...

as Saemon san said .. very informative, interesting & educational post ^^

Just in case we want to DISPOSE this post .. shall we seperate it to : words, pics, videos ? :p

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

どうもSaemonさん!
Glad to see an on-topic comment on this-out-of-blog-theme post :D

biraru san,
lol Good one!!XD

rua said...

I don't know why in Jordan we don't have commitment of doing the right thing , there were a lot of garbage recycling boxes in Just but most of the students didn't take it seriously ah really annoying T-T

Amani AbuQdais أماني أبوقديس said...

..yea. They had like 5 or 6 categories of waste but when you look inside,its just a mix..
But anyway I don't think that this project was still active in the uni,otherwise you will see posters and brochures about it.