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

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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