By William Wetherall
My main duty, this hottest time of year, has been to protect kitchen garbage from crows, stray dogs and cats, and homeless people too weak to lift the plastic net I have had to put out three times a week for the past couple of weeks. The net is no barrier for critters small enough to crawl or fly through its holes.
My main right has been to vote on a garbage referendum in the neighborhood association which embraces my address -- and which puts me, with my approval, on its garbage watch roster.
I am, albeit an alien, a registered resident of the city -- a "citizen" if you will. My status as a municipal resident permits me to participate in the national health insurance and pension schemes, and obliges me to pay national and local taxes. I can't vote for National Diet representatives, or for municipal or prefectural assembly members. But I can cast a ballot for how to manage neighborhood garbage.
Neighborhood associations
Some neighborhood associations are involved in public safety, crime prevention, fire prevention, youth counseling, elderly care, child care, disaster preparation and relief, and local festivals. But most associations today, while passively circulating bulletins about municipal facilities and notices of recent burglaries, are mainly concerned about keeping their streets and parks clean and safe for kids, and with garbage collection.
Garbage collection is the main activity of my association. In most neighborhoods, pick-up points are established at a central corner that is also convenient for the garbage trucks. Newcomers to my neighborhood are surprised to find that pick-up points rotate from house to house every couple of months.
A couple of houses are not used because they lack adequate frontage on the street -- mine, for one, because my lot is at the end of a narrow 20-meter approach. Or they have suitable frontage but are located in places that would hamper the movements of garbage trucks. Practically all households, though, share weekly garbage duties.
Kinds of garbage
On burnable (kitchen and garden) garbage days, the household on watch sets out the net that protects bags of garbage from birds, dogs, and cats. On recycled garbage days the same household sets out the net for bags of plastic garbage (mostly plastic packaging), various bags, a box for batteries, and a vat for cooking oil.
One bag is for plastic bottles. Another is for cans. Three others are for clear, amber, and green bottles and jars. Yet another is for miscellaneous unburnable garbage (including broken glass and ceramic pots). Textiles, metal, and several kinds of paper and cardboard are also separated before setting them out. Each household separates its own garbage, with the help of elaborate charts that show various classifications and how waste should be bagged, cut and bundled, whatever.
There is only one truck on burnable garbage days but several on recycled garbage days. There is one truck for plastic garbage, another for plastic bottles, another for glass containers, another for cans, another for miscellaneous non-burnable garbage, batteries and light bulbs, and cooking oil, another for metal, another for cloth, another for paper including magazines and books, light cardboard, and waxed cartons (torn or cut open, not just flattened), and another for heavy corrugated cardboard.
The specialization makes sense, as there are lots of neighborhoods, and pick-up stations every three or four blocks.
What holds us together
In the ten years I have lived in my present neighborhood, the only controversy has been the garbage collection system. The pressing issue now is whether to continue to manage our garbage pick-up site ourselves -- or consign its management to the Clean Center -- the municipal organization that oversees garbage collection, dumping, waste management, and resource recycling.
The debate is over the comparative merits and demerits of keeping a hand in the management of our own garbage, versus contracting the Clean Center to do everything except separate the garbage and carry it to the collection site. Participation brings the neighborhood association a nominal income as its share of the value the company now realizes from selling recycled resources. Consignment would result in forfeiting this income.
The problem is not the money, since there is nothing to use it for.
One problem is that, as in many neighborhoods, the number of single-resident homes is increasing, including elderly people who live alone and who may themselves need assistance. The other is that, if the association leaves everything to the company, there is nothing left to keep the neighbors rubbing elbows with each other.
Supporters of the status quo argue that, while fewer households may be willing, ready, and able to participate in the garbage system, and while this will impose an increasing burden on those who volunteer for garbage watch, the present system will still provide an opportunity for neighbors to get to know each other in the process of cooperating on managing their garbage site.
As one neighbor put it, "Garbage collection is the only thing that holds us together." Well, yes and no.
My closest neighbors
Garbage site preparation and cleanup is almost always the job of the housewives who are at home most of the time. While the duties are assigned to a household, they are usually performed by the women who stay at home. You rarely see men, or kids, congregate at the garbage site.
I have met many of my neighbors but see and talk to some more than others. Sheer proximity, followed by common interests, seem more important than, say, who is in what neighborhood association and where they deposit their garbage.
I have still not met the father of the family that lives closest to me. I have met his wife and four children. I have met his parents, who live with them. And now and then I have heard what I take to be his voice. But I have never, to my knowledge, seen him.
Our homes are separated by about two meters, and there is no fence between them, which is rather unusual. The main entrance of their home, though, is on its other side. And their household is in a different neighborhood association. Borders, which have to be drawn somewhere, inevitably separate closest neighbors.
I regularly see the two women of the house when they come out their kitchen door, at the back of their house, which faces what used to be the front of my house. That is where they keep their garbage until pick-up days in their neighborhood. It is also between our houses that I have given them fresh black berries and tomatoes from my garden, and where they have given me potatoes and boxes of cakes they have picked up on weekend excursions somewhere.
Recycled-garbage management questionnaire
But back to my adventures in garbage citizenship.
The recent ballot on what to do offered three choices: (1) Continue to manage the garbage site locally, (2) Consign its management to the Clean Center, or (3) Either. The information provided with (2) stated that, at present, some 70 neighborhood associations among about 250 in the city have chosen to consign everything to the Clean Center. That appears to be the trend.
You could optionally check a reason for your choice.
1. Because at present there are no problems.
2. There are measures for helping each other, including exemption from participation.
3. It helps the nourishment of harmony, and the mutual mixing of residents, in the area.
4. Because it's a source of precious revenue.
5. Because it's useful in raising awareness about separation [of garbage].
6. A manager/owner/consignment-company [system] would be implemented.
7. Because its troublesome to put out and bring in the collection apparatus [net, bags, etc.].
8. Others.
I lay awake, these sweltering August nights, not wondering if there really is a Dog, for I know there are many. I hear them barking on one battleground or another throughout the known universe.
Rather I dwell on a more fundamental question.
Is the regionalization and globalization of garbage collection tearing apart my community?
12 August 2009
