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

我们的项目源于这样一种认识，即除非我们研究整个系统，否则在一个成熟的社会中无法实现真正的可持续回收。我们决定选择纸张回收作为研究对象，期望在纸张回收中最明显地发现回收系统的有效实现的困难。这是因为在日本，纸张回收几乎是一个封闭的系统。虽然有各种各样的再生纸产品，但我们专注于卫生纸，因为以下三个原因：1）几乎所有家庭每天都使用卫生纸，2）市场上既有新产品，也有再生产品，3）消费者可以自由选择产品。纸通过许多人的手，包括消费者，收藏家，废纸经销商，造纸商，报社，出版商、批发商和零售商。我们的三年计划包括1。对日本、德国、瑞典和美国的主要参与者的采访 ...更多信息 es，2.日本、德国和瑞典的家庭回收和卫生纸消费全国调查问卷，3.调查消费者对卫生纸的偏好的盲测; 4.对日本的造纸商进行邮件调查，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.对东京的收集者和废纸经销商进行了邮件调查，以分析对团体收集和补贴的意见。本研究通过对造纸行业的行业文献进行分析，研究了研究过程中的社会经济变化，通过对比分析，我们的主要发现是，消费行为是循环系统的重要驱动力，消费行为与生产策略之间存在正反馈关系。另一方面，回收行为和消费行为之间没有显着的联系。在日本，收集者和废纸经销商是独立的小行为者，而在美国和欧洲国家，他们统一为大型废物经销商。这应该考虑到有效的回收系统，而不会产生社会经济上的严重摩擦。上述研究结果作为后续论文发表在Resources，Conservation and Recycling上。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