A Comparative Study of Recycling Societies : The Possibility of International Cooperation

我们的项目源于这样一种认识，即除非我们审视整个系统，否则在一个成熟的社会中，不可能实现真正的可持续回收。我们决定将纸回收作为研究对象，期望在纸回收中最明显地发现回收系统高效实现的困难。这尤其是因为在日本，纸张回收一直是一个近乎封闭的系统。虽然再生纸产品种类繁多，但我们将重点放在卫生纸上，原因如下：1)几乎所有家庭都每天使用卫生纸；2)市场上既有原始产品，也有回收产品；3)消费者可以自由选择产品。纸张经过许多人手中，包括消费者、收集商、二手纸经销商、造纸商、报社、出版商、批发商和零售商。我们为期三年的项目包括1.对日本、德国、瑞典和美国主要演员的采访…2.日本、德国和瑞典家庭回收和废纸消费的全国性问卷；3.盲测消费者对卫生纸的偏好；4.对日本造纸商的邮寄调查，研究他们的生产策略，并将其与消费者的消费标准进行比较；5.对东京的收集商和二手纸经销商进行邮寄调查，分析他们对团体收集和补贴的意见；6.密切检查造纸业的贸易纸，研究项目期间的社会经济变化。通过比较分析，我们的主要发现是，消费行为是回收系统的关键驱动力，消费行为与生产策略之间存在正反馈关系。另一方面，回收行为与消费行为之间没有发现显著的联系。在日本，收集商和废纸经销商是独立的小行为者，而在美国和欧洲国家，他们统一为大型废品经销商。对于高效的回收系统而不会产生严重的社会经济摩擦，应该考虑到这一点。上述发现作为后续论文发表在《资源、保护和回收》杂志上。较少

Our project originated from recognition that truly sustainable recycling cannot be achieved in a matured society unless we look into the whole system. We decided to pick up paper recycling as a research subject, with expectation that difficulty in efficient realization of recycling system is most clearly detected in paper recycling. This is particularly because paper recycling has been a nearly closed system in Japan. Although there are various recycled paper products, we focused on toilet paper because of the following three reasons : 1) almost all households use toilet paper daily, 2) both virgin and recycled products are available in the market, and 3) consumers have a freedom of choice among products.Paper passes through many hands, including those of consumers, collectors, used paper dealers, paper makers, newspaper offices, publishers, and wholesalers and retailers. Our three year project consisted of 1. interviews with the key actors in Japan, Germany, Sweden and the United Stat … More es, 2. nationwide questionnaire on recycling and toile paper consumption of the households in Japan, Germany and Sweden, 3. blind test examining consumers' preference on toilet paper, 4. mail survey of paper makers in Japan to study their production strategy and to compare it with consumers' consumption criteria, 5. mail survey of collectors and used paper dealers in Tokyo to analyze the opinion on group collection and subsidy, 6. close check of the trade papers of paper industries to study the socio-economic change during the research project.Our main findings through the comparative analyses, are that consumption behavior is a crucial driving force of the recycling system, and that there is positive feedback between consumption behavior and production strategy. On the other hand, no significant linkage was detected between recycling behavior and consumption behavior. Collectors and used paper dealers are independent small actors in Japan, while they are unified as large waste dealers in the United States and European countries. This should be taken into account for efficient recycling system without socio-economically serious friction. The findings such as above were published as succeeding papers in Resources, Conservation and Recycling. Less