By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign ServiceTuesday, November 18, 2008
TOKYO -- It doesn't smell like a dump.
If it did, there are a quarter-million neighbors to complain about Tokyo's Toshima Incineration Plant, which devours 300 tons of garbage a day, turning it into electricity, hot water and a kind of recyclable sand.
Japan burns more garbage in the heart of its big cities than any developed country. The Toshima plant is one of 21 factory-size incinerators that operate around the clock amid Tokyo's 12 million densely packed residents.
Remarkably, this does not create a big stink, literally or politically.
"There is no smoke or odor coming from the incinerators," said Hideki Kidohshi, a garbage analyst at the Japan Research Institute.
While the United States buries most garbage in landfills, Japan burns about three-quarters of its trash in the world's largest armada of incinerators. All this burning raised dioxin levels in Japan to dangerously high levels in the 1990s, but technological advances have since corrected the problem. "All in all, the dioxin issue has been conquered," Kidohshi said.
Read more and watch video at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/17/AR2008111702968.html
If it did, there are a quarter-million neighbors to complain about Tokyo's Toshima Incineration Plant, which devours 300 tons of garbage a day, turning it into electricity, hot water and a kind of recyclable sand.
Japan burns more garbage in the heart of its big cities than any developed country. The Toshima plant is one of 21 factory-size incinerators that operate around the clock amid Tokyo's 12 million densely packed residents.
Remarkably, this does not create a big stink, literally or politically.
"There is no smoke or odor coming from the incinerators," said Hideki Kidohshi, a garbage analyst at the Japan Research Institute.
While the United States buries most garbage in landfills, Japan burns about three-quarters of its trash in the world's largest armada of incinerators. All this burning raised dioxin levels in Japan to dangerously high levels in the 1990s, but technological advances have since corrected the problem. "All in all, the dioxin issue has been conquered," Kidohshi said.
Read more and watch video at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/17/AR2008111702968.html
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