TOKYO, Japan — Tokyo has been consistently rated amongst the top five cleanest cities globally, and not by accident. This accolade has come about from various innovative waste management strategies throughout the years, such as the Tokyo Super Eco Town project.

Crafted in 2001, the aim of the Tokyo Super Eco Town project was to resolve waste issues in the Tokyo metropolitan area, creating environmental industries and the locations to facilitate them, while promoting recycling to the citizens. At this point the city had been suffering from the creation of excessive waste from its industrial and construction sectors, a lack of facilities to treat and dispose of this waste, and illegal dumping by malicious businesses. There were also the health and environmental risks associated with various materials in the waste.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government earmarked lands at two sites along Tokyo Bay for the Tokyo Super Eco Town, a collective group of industrial waste treatment facilities roughly seven kilometres from Haneda Airport.

“It’s literally a town for recycling factories,” Tadayo Kaneda of the Tokyo Metropolitan Environmental Public Corporation told overseas journalists participating in the 2024 Association for Promotion of International Cooperation Japan Journalism Fellowship.

At its Tokyo Eco Town facility Takatoshi Co., Ltd. sorts the incoming construction waste
manually for hazardous and dangerous materials before sending it onwards to the more detailed automated
sorting systems.

As of 2017, Tokyo Super Eco Town has been home to 13 recycling facilities run by 10 companies handling material from E-waste to contaminated soil. The first to go into operation was Takatoshi Co, Ltd.

“Our focus is the construction industry,” said Masatoshi Kasai, executive director — Takatoshi.

Kasai, a 30-year veteran of the waste industry, elaborated further that Takatoshi accepts waste from construction projects, and sorts them using a mixture of man-power and technological solutions into materials that can be recycled. Those materials are then turned into products that can be then sold to environmentally conscious companies looking to use recycled content in their output.

“We operate 24 hours a day, taking in around 25 million tons of construction waste from Tokyo annually,” Kasai said.

Kasai is very proud of the 270 machines that perform a variety of difficult sorting functions.

“We operate at a high level, surpassing the basic regulations, in relation to noise, dust, and environmental contamination, for us to operate here in Tokyo Super Eco Town. Ninety per cent of the waste that enters Takatoshi is recycled. Our eventual target is 96 per cent,” said Kasai.

Beyond the visually clean city streets of Tokyo, the Super Eco Town project has not only reduced the city’s final industrial waste disposal volume by half (as of 2011 it sat at 54 per cent) but it has reduced the dependence on neighbouring prefectures for waste processing, and lowered waste disposal volumes in the surrounding Kanto region as well.

When asked if such a project would work in other countries, such as Jamaica, Kasai replied that the key is research.

“Something of the magnitude of Takatoshi may not be necessary. Each country needs to look at the type of waste it’s trying to deal with. It may be as simple as teaching the citizens to sort before disposal, or use manual labour methods,” said Kasai.