The Oil Drum

I can't find the article I read that mentioned 14 categories but here's a quote from the NYT.

How Do Japanese Dump Trash? Let Us Count the Myriad Ways

Japanese cities increase number of garbage categories in national drive to reduce waste and increase recycling; in Yokohama, which has 10 garbage categories, residents get 27-page booklet on how to sort their trash, with detailed instructions on 518 items; small town of Kamikatsu has 44 garbage categories;

This article is from 2005. The one I saw was from earlier this year. I guess I need to be more specific as garbage collection varies from city to city just as it does here.

Don't become a Buddhist. The world doesn't need more Buddhists. Do practice compassion. The world does need more compassion. -- Dalai Lama

Here in Sweden almost all trash goes directly to a district heating central and are burnt for energy. And yes, the furnaces do not emit poisonous gases, apparantly.

Recycleable or hazardous waste are supposed to be sorted and left at local recycling stations, of which several are located in most neighbourhoods, supposedly within walking distance (I live in the countryside and thus have a 2 kilometer walk to the recycling station). At the least people in general sort out paper and glass, but you could also sort metal, plastics and cloth. Rare categories like oils, car batteries, kitchen appliances, electronics etc are picked up twice a year outside the local firestation, or can be left year-round at the main recycling station, which features some 30-35 different categories of recycling containers.

Trash disposal at the household are solved differently, at my old dwelling they weighed everything automatically. At my current residence it's a flat fee, but bio-degradable waste should go into black bags, burnable into white bags, and they are sorted automatically - white bags goes to district heating, black bags goes to a local biogas fermenter unit, which produces pure methane and soil/fertilizer. The biogas serves some of the local buses, the soil/fertilizer goes back to the farms.

Landfills still exist in Sweden, but there aren't a lot of them, and I guess only non-usable trash like plaster, rock-wool insulation, fiberglass etc goes there.

There are discussions if the recycling system is wasteful, energywise, but people don't have to recycle, everything can go into burnable waste if they wish, although it would be illegal to put batteries and other hazardous waste there. Not that anyone would be caught, that is.

Anyway, the entire recycling system requires fossil fuels. Or maybe the biogas could be used to fuel the waste trucks in the future. I guess eventually people will burn their waste in the backyard, and you can imagine what that will do to the environment in the cities...

The upcoming shortage of fossil fuels will cause us to consume less, and therefore produce less waste, so it might play out nicely enough anyway.

When our youngest stops using diapers, we will switch to emptying the trashcan every four weeks, instead of two weeks as we do now. All biodegradable kitchen waste goes into our own composts and back into our vegetable patch.