How to make environmental protection a profitable business in Japan

Japanese trash cans have become the new darling of Chinese media in pursuit of interviews, which is an interesting scene at the G20 leaders' summit held in Osaka this year. As China's garbage classification has entered the era of compulsion, Chinese journalists are most interested in Japan's meticulous to nearly strict garbage classification system in addition to covering the summit news.

In the implementation opinions on the implementation of the development plan outline of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Bay area issued recently by Guangdong Province, it is proposed to cultivate and expand new energy, energy conservation and environmental protection industries, and form an industrial agglomeration belt with energy conservation and environmental protection technology research and development and headquarters base as the core.

How does Japan gradually develop environmental protection into a trillion scale industry? How does this country, once "floating on oil", promote high-quality economic development through environmental protection industry? The reporter of Nanfang Daily searched for the answer through field research in Japan.

From "floating on oil" to high energy efficiency countries

For Tang Jiayi, who has been studying in Japan for five years, every time he moves, he needs to listen to a garbage classification lecture. "The landlord will send me a thick 'garbage disposal guidance manual'. Only after confirming that I understand it and can implement it in place, can I leave a 'please you' and hand in the key." During the conversation, Tang Jiayi skillfully divided the bottle cap, bottle body and packing paper of the mineral water bottle into three parts and threw them into different garbage cans.

Shangsheng Town, located in Tokushima County, Shikoku, Japan, has become the "most environmentally friendly town" of nethong due to waste classification. Here, the reporter saw that the empty milk box was folded and hung on the shelf to dry, the glass bottle was classified as colored and transparent, and the kitchen waste was converted into field fertilizer. According to local residents, there are 45 kinds of garbage in shangsheng town. At present, everyone in the town is striving to achieve "zero garbage" by 2020. Thanks to zero pollution, even the leaves in the small town are used as the ornament of high-level cuisine and become a characteristic industry.

The 89 year old Yamanashi, who lives in Tokyo, recalled that this was not the case 50 years ago in Japan. "Japan has been 'rescued' from the ensuing pollution." In the 1960s and 1970s, with the rapid economic growth of Japan and the deteriorating environment, Tokyo Bay was known as the "world's dirtiest bay", with a large number of fish and shellfish dying. Garbage siege, Tokyo because of the "garbage war", Minamata disease and other four major public hazards have emerged in various places, causing people to attach great importance to environmental issues.

In an interview, Hirofumi maruchi, a professor at the Institute of Social Sciences at the University of Tokyo, compared Japan at that time to "a country floating on oil". If the oil imported from Japan in 1980 is put into standard oil barrels, it can go around the earth 28 times in a row, Mr. maruchi said. At that time, Japan relied heavily on oil and developed in a way of high investment, high energy consumption and high pollution.

The meeting of Kansai branch of Japan innovation society, which participated in many industrial policy-making, grew up and became effective. It said that the oil crisis ended Japan's rapid economic growth for 20 years, and also taught the Japanese a real lesson. It thoroughly awakened the Japanese sense of crisis of resource scarcity and environmental protection. Garbage sorting and recycling and resource reuse were deeply embedded in the Japanese consciousness at this time.