The Formation and the Agenda of Cyclical Society in Asia

2000年，日本颁布了《循环型社会建设基本法》和相关的一系列附属法律，推出了一系列抑制自然资源消耗、减轻环境负担的举措，但这里的一个严重问题是，中国的经济增长导致对黑色金属废料、废纸、废塑料等材料的需求居高不下，价格有上涨的趋势。中国是一块从日本吸引可回收资源并极大影响日本回收体系的“磁铁”。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，中国的持续经济增长将继续导致可回收资源从日本流出。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…中国和东南亚国家制造的电子产品更多，所以即使CRT被回收和分离，日本没有CRT制造工厂意味着该国缺乏国内资源循环运营的基础。第三，日本的回收体系在经济上是不合理的。例如，在容器和包装废物回收系统中，市政当局使用税收来收集、运输和分离玻璃瓶、易拉罐、PET瓶和塑料容器，而承包商承担回收成本；但按照目前的价格，PET瓶即使可以销售，也被收集为无法销售的废物，并被带到指定的回收中心。如果玻璃瓶、罐头、PET瓶和塑料容器能够被分离和回收，这是经济上的优势，但许多市政当局在不分离它们的情况下对它们进行收集。必须考虑一种新的办法，这将涉及通过集团资源回收和其他手段收集可销售的废物，并逐步减少市政当局收集容器和包装，因为这将降低通过税收实现的废物管理的百分比。较少

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