A peek into leading Japanese town’s garbage collection, recycling system
Published:Saturday | October 22, 2022 | 12:06 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
OSAKI, Japan:
Since 2015, successive administrations have spent millions of dollars in training and certifying community wardens to assist with Jamaica’s failing garbage disposal problem.
However, the country continues to experience significant garbage collection issues with the state agency responsible for collection often blaming citizens for their refusal to containerise their waste for collection and for not making a stronger effort to recycle.
Shoichi Hidaka, a community leader in a small town called Osaki in southwestern Japan, is the Jamaican equivalent of a community warden. He has dedicated more than two decades to managing garbage separation for residents in the township of nearly 13,000.
There are 150 collection stations in Osaki, and Hidaka is responsible for one located in the Nisisako neighbourhood, which has roughly 98 households.
Hidaka collects the properly separated waste once per month under a recycling programme for which the community has become widely known.
Hidaka said he has been a community leader in Osaki since 1998, having led different areas before Nisisako. The town is rated number one in Japan for recycling, and Hidaka’s role is pivotal.
On Thursday, The Gleaner witnessed Hidaka carrying out his civic duty.
“My role is to instruct residents to stick to the rules. I will take the garbage back to their homes and indicate what is wrong,” he said of waste not correctly separated.
He told The Gleaner that before becoming a community leader, he was a garbage collector in Osaki town and is, therefore, very knowledgeable in the area.
“I was employed by the municipal office to collect garbage every day and I was going around these houses every day, so that’s why I became the leader,” he said.
Dr Purnamawati, an international environmental instructor from Indonesia who is attached to the Osaki Resident and Environment Division, told The Gleaner that each community chooses its leader and the government then invests in training.
“They are the head person to do what he (Hidaka) must do for the community, how to separate waste like the Osaki system,” said Dr Purnamawati. “The government, every year must teach and train the community leader how to separate waste. He is the leader and shows commitment to the community and makes the time to teach the community.”
Hidaka gets a stipend for his valuable role, but he noted that there are not many young community leaders in Osaki.
“Probably, that’s because I am not instructing them very much. Whenever I think I want to instruct them, I just do it myself and it’s quicker, so probably it’s my fault,” he said.
He is minded, however, that the youths should be part of the process.
Dr Purnamawati said the issue with small towns like Osaki is that there are more elderly residents.
According to Hidaka, for the community leader model to work in small island states such as Jamaica, it is important for the government, residents and the collecting agency to work closely together.
In 2015, then Local Government Minister Noel Arscott had announced that some 164 people had completed training as environmental wardens through the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF) Integrated Community Development Project (ICDP). Projected to last three years, the programme was estimated to cost $100 million.
The training, which took place over a three-day period, saw people from 21 communities in Kingston, St Andrew, Clarendon and St Catherine being trained in sustainable solid-waste management practices, solid-waste management regulation, national environmental regulation and sustainable development.
In 2019, National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) Executive Director Audley Gordon estimated that about 70 to 80 per cent of the garbage in gullies in Kingston and Montego Bay, St James, could be eliminated with the renewal of the programme that would see garbage wardens in select communities.
Gordon said that the programme would be piloted initially in two communities and is aimed at making garbage collection easier for the agency in unplanned communities, where roadways are often narrow, and, in some cases, non-existent.
The entire project was expected to cost about $300 million.
During his Sectoral Debate presentation in May 2021, Local Government and Rural Development Minister Desmond McKenzie said the that the NSWMA had collected 1,014,000 tonnes of waste in the 2020-2021 fiscal year, at a cost of nearly $1.9 billion.
He added that important work was also done to remove plastic waste from the environment.
He said that community wardens were trained, and through the Rae Town Plastic Minimisation Project, funded by the Japanese government under the United Nations Environment Programme, nearly 17,000 pounds of plastic were collected.
“A total of 16 environmental wardens were also trained in plastic separation, plastic recycling and community sensitisation about solid waste disposal,” he said.
In 2020, Gordon told The Gleaner that Jamaicans appear to suffer from a cultural defect that is reflected in their widescale acceptance that it is somebody else’s responsibility to tidy up after them. He lamented that many citizens actually believe that by dumping garbage at will, any and everywhere, they are contributing to job creation.
The community leader initiative has worked for Osaki while Jamaica continues to struggle.