The Formation and the Agenda of Cyclical Society in Asia

2000年，日本颁布了《建立循环型社会基本法》，并出台了一系列相关的附属法律，采取了一系列措施，控制自然资源消耗，减轻环境负担；但一个严重的问题是，中国的经济增长导致了对废铁、废纸和废塑料等材料的高需求，因此这些材料的价格有上涨的趋势。中国就像一块“磁铁”，吸引着日本的可回收资源，极大地影响着日本的回收系统。这里有三个问题。首先，中国资源短缺，但廉价劳动力供应充足，而日本劳动力成本相对较高，回收成本较高。因此，中国经济的持续增长将继续促使日本的可回收资源外流。第二个问题与日本国内的回收系统有关。至少90%的电视机和其他消费电子产品是在中国和东南亚国家生产的，所以即使阴极射线管被回收和分离，日本没有阴极射线管制造工厂意味着该国缺乏国内资源循环运营的基础。第三，日本的回收系统在经济上是不合理的。例如，在容器和包装废物回收制度下，市政当局使用税收来收集、运输和分离玻璃瓶、罐头、PET瓶和塑料容器，而承包商承担回收成本；但在目前的价格下，PET瓶被当作不可销售的废物收集，尽管它们是可销售的，并被送到指定的回收中心。如果玻璃瓶、易拉罐、PET瓶和塑料容器可以分离和回收，这在经济上是有利的，但许多市政当局收集它们而不进行分离。必须考虑一种新的办法，其中包括通过集体资源回收和其他方法收集可销售的废物，并逐步减少市政当局收集容器和包装，因为这将减少通过税收实现废物管理的百分比。少

In 2000, Japan promulgated the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-based Society and introduced a number of subsidiary laws related to it, thereby launching a series of initiatives to hold down the consumption of natural resources and reduce environmental burdens; but a serious problem here is that China's economic growth has induced a high demand for materials like ferrous scrap, waste paper, and waste plastic, whose prices therefore tend to rise. China is a "magnet" that attracts recyclable resources from Japan and greatly affects Japan's recycling systems. There are three problems.In the first place, China is short on resources yet has a plentiful supply of cheap labor, while Japan has relatively high labor costs and higher recycling costs. Continued economic growth in China will therefore continue to induce the outflow of recyclable resources from Japan.The second problem has to do with Japan's own domestic recycling systems. At least 90% of television sets and other consumer el … More ectronics are made in China and Southeast Asian countries, so even if CRTs were to be recovered and separated, the absence of CRT manufacturing plants in Japan means that the country lacks the very basis for domestic resource cycling operations.Thirdly, Japan's recycling systems are irrational in economic terms. For example, under the container and packaging waste recycling system, municipalities use taxes to collect, transport, and separate glass bottles, cans, PET bottles, and plastic containers, while contractors bear the costs for recycling; but at current prices PET bottles are collected as unmarketable wastes even though they are marketable, and taken to designated recycling centers. It is economically advantageous if glass bottles, cans, PET bottles, and plastic containers can be separated and recovered, but many municipalities collect them without separating them. A new approach must be considered, one which would involve collecting marketable wastes as such through group resource recovery and other means and by gradually reducing the collection of containers and packaging by municipalities, as this would lessen the percentage of waste management achieved through taxes. Less