Japan’s landfills are filling up fast, prompting the national government to launch an initiative intended to cut the nation’s waste stream in half by 2010, from 56 million tons per year to 28 million. In this densely populated archipelago, locals don’t take kindly to plans for new landfills and they don’t like the idea of incineration, which can result in deadly dioxin emissions. Already several offshore islands have been created from landfill material, but that’s not exactly a sustainable solution. The Japanese will have to resort to good ol’ recycling and conservation, including curbing their weakness for elaborate packaging. “If we are going to deal with this problem, society itself must change,” said an official at the Environment Ministry.
