In the heart of Japan, the town of Kamikatsu has emerged as a beacon of sustainability, implementing zero waste initiatives that challenge conventional waste management practices. This article explores Kamikatsu’s innovative approaches, offering insights into how communities can embrace environmental stewardship.

Consider everything you throw away on a daily basis. Corrugated cardboard, pamphlets, Snapple bottles. Beer cans. Candy wrappers. A fistful of crumpled receipts. Many of us have a vague sense of what goes in a recycling bin—glass vessels, Amazon boxes, old newspapers. But where does a spent tube of toothpaste go? Old lightbulbs? Cans of compressed air? Broken umbrellas? What about blister packs for medication? Flat tires? Leftover frying oil, used-up lighters, a vase broken beyond repair? 

Yasutomo Furumichi can tell you the answer. He would point out that the toothpaste tube should be thoroughly cleaned and placed in the plastics bin alongside used pill packs and foam netting. Used light bulbs can be recycled for their glass and mercury components. Steel or aluminum spray cans can be melted down; ditto with the lighter. Broken ceramics find a new life as roadbed material. Used tempura oil will be recycled into fuel and animal feed. Oh, and glass bottles should be separated by color.

Furumichi is a staff member at the Zero Waste Center, the only rubbish collection site in Kamikatsu, a small Japanese mountain town on Shikoku Island. This is his first full-time job out of university; he moved here in January 2024 from his hometown in Osaka. Five days a week, Furumichi greets residents who drive their household waste here for disposal, as per the town’s rules. On arrival, they will sort their rubbish out into 45 different categories (the first of which is not rubbish at all, but “re-use”—objects in this category are sent to the free “thrift store” on site). Labels on the respective boxes indicate what these items will be recycled into, where in Japan this will take place, and how much it costs the town per kilogram to process. Should anyone be at a loss, Yasu is there to show them how to separate their garbage.

Kamikatsu is a town of around 1,400 people. Of its 42 square miles, 88.3% is swathed in verdant forest. What cleared land remains is farmed or inhabited. Citrus groves and rice fields dot the steep mountain slopes. Some of the roads are so narrow and winding that they make city slickers squirm in their seats. It is officially listed as one of Japan’s 100 Most Beautiful Villages. 

But it is perhaps most famous for being the country’s first zero-waste municipality, having achieved an 81% recycling rate by 2016—a stark contrast to Japan’s national average of 20%. 

This didn’t happen overnight. Open-air burning of waste was once the norm in Kamikatsu. For more than 20 years starting in 1975, every bit of industrial, mass-produced rubbish—from cupboards to car tires—was burned at Hibigatani, the former dumpsite where the Zero Waste Center now stands. Long-term resident and activist Atsuko Watanabe recalls a deep, wide hole that grew shallower over time as debris and ash piled up. The air was permanently thick with roiling clouds of smoke and the stench of plastics set ablaze. Depending on the wind, you could smell it from as far as four miles away.

Kamikatsu’s own backyard was in ecological peril. The status quo was no longer tenable, and the town was forced to change. The ’90s saw a concerted effort to tackle the waste issue, led by a group of town officials and residents. There were innumerable meetings, town hall round tables, and door-to-door household visits. Things began to shift, though not without plenty of resistance along the way. 

In 1991, the town first looked to solve the issue of kitchen waste by subsidizing purchases of compost bins for all households. In 1997, it began recycling in nine categories, partially in compliance with new national legislation; this increased to 25 the following year. A brief dalliance with using small incinerators alongside the recycling system was nixed in 2001 after it was found that the machines emitted unsafe levels of dioxins and other substances. Town officials increased sorting into 33 categories. In 2003, Kamikatsu became the first municipality in Japan to declare a zero-waste goal by 2020. The town has maintained a 45-category sorting system since 2016.  

Residents involved in the town’s zero-waste activities are quick to point out that 45 categories makes for an impressive media soundbite, but that it’s arbitrary from a practical point of view. It’s just a number, according to cafe owner Terumi Azuma. The sorting processes aren’t perfect. She and several other residents lead monthly discussion groups on community issues; a frequent topic is how the system can be improved. There are always newer, better, cheaper, or more efficient recycling methods. 

But “I do think there’s value in the number being so high,” said Kana Watando, who moved to Kamikatsu from Canada in 2020. “Something about it shocks people into thinking about the composite parts of waste.”

The town’s rubbish collection system is only the most visible aspect of its zero-waste practices. Azuma and Watando, along with Belgian native Sil Van de Velde, run a social enterprise called INOW, whose educational programs and private experiences bring guests into the community to engage with its cultural traditions, countryside resourcefulness, and relationship with nature, all of which inform the town’s approach to sustainable living. Zero waste is part of the town’s identity, they say, but it’s more than just recycling; it’s about how people relate to things in their daily life. 

Visitors often ask the INOW team: What’s next for Kamikatsu? Mostly, they’re asking about whether there will be more sorting categories in the future; other times, it’s because they see that the town has reached some kind of limit. Though incineration is not practiced inside the town, there will always be rubbish it sends elsewhere for incineration—menstrual pads, used tissues, medical masks, rubber gloves, shoes that are beyond repair—which currently makes up about 19% of the town’s waste. And, despite an 81% recycling rate, the overall volume of waste generated has not fallen over the past 10 to 15 years. If anything, there has been a slight increase. 

But given that Kamikatsu suffers the same issue that all rural towns across Japan face—a dwindling, aging population—you could also see it as an existential question. Will this town exist in 20 or 30 years? Will there be enough people to hold the annual summer festival? Will the rice fields grow fallow with no one to tend them? How does the community survive going forward? 

The town had 6,263 residents in 1955. As of 2024, that number has dropped to 1,362 people, partly due to the loss of jobs that resulted from the collapse of the region’s lumber industry in the ’70s. The elderly comprise over 52% of its population: Around 50 people, mostly from this demographic, pass away each year. 

Early on in the town’s zero-waste movement, officials were aware that their recycling proposals were hardly inclusive or practical for the elderly. Because Kamikatsu’s 55 hamlets are mostly separated by dense mountain forest, door-to-door waste collection for everyone was deemed too costly. But mobility posed a major issue for older residents, who were less likely to drive or sometimes unable to leave the house often enough to visit the waste collection site. In response, a group of residents began helping elderly residents take their rubbish to Hibigatani. 

This eventually transitioned into the current waste transport assistance system run by the town hall, where all registered households can have their waste collected free of charge once every two months. However, this system is likely to experience strain as the years go by, as it requires manpower in a town where talent is already scarce. 

Citrus and leaf farmer Hidemi Asano’s experience illuminates another facet of how unintentionally exclusionary the system can be. Having grown up in Tokushima, she moved to the town in 2021 to take over her grandparents’ abandoned farm. On arrival, she found plastic waste strewn across the land. Her grandparents had fallen ill years earlier; ashamed and embarrassed at being unable to cope with the town’s sorting system, they resorted to dumping everything on their farm. Long after cleanup, Asano continues to find microplastics in the soil today. 

Death isn’t the only reason Kamikatsu’s population continues to decline. Other structural issues play their part. For one, there’s a shortage of viable housing for newcomers to move into. A handful of people leave this tight-knit community each year—not necessarily because they want to, but because the town has no education facilities beyond middle school. Some move to the city on their own as teenagers to attend high school and university, like Azuma did at age 15; others uproot their families for their children’s education. Azuma is one of the few Kamikatsu-born citizens in her cohort who came home. Many of her peers never looked back. 

Structural issues notwithstanding, those in the zero-waste movement recognize that Kamikatsu has to be a place that its residents want and are able to continue living in, even if it means, for example, making the waste collection system less of a burden for individual residents. Two decades after the 2003 declaration, the town is in a moment of change, and people like Azuma are asking themselves: What does zero waste mean to us? What is important to us? What do we focus on? How do we embrace joy in our lives while living sustainably? What will the next two or three decades look like? Where do we want to go? 

These are long-term questions, topics that emerge time and again at Azuma’s monthly discussions, in between hammering out contingency rubbish collection plans in case of natural disasters and organizing educational field trips for Kamikatsu’s elementary school students. 

But if there is a ray of hope on the horizon, it’s to be found in the town’s crop of new residents. The last five years have witnessed a steady trickle of young transplants to Kamikatsu, drawn to the town from all over Japan and beyond by its progressive environmental policies. Watando and Van de Velde, both in their early thirties, moved to the town in 2020 and 2023 respectively to run INOW. There’s farmer Hidemi Asano, aged 35. For Big Eye Company employees Momona Otsuka and Yasutomo Furumichi, the Zero Waste Center is their first full-time workplace out of university; Otsuka has been here since 2020. There are people like Aki Ikezoe, the store manager of local craft beer brewery Rise & Win. Tea producer Daichi Hyakuno. Mio Kimura and Sho Ishikawa, the farmers behind Tonpuku, Kamikatsu’s first and only gelateria.  

Moving to rural Japan can be tough and socially isolating; more so when you’re young in a place where everyone else is at least twice your age. Even Kamikatsu, with its open, welcoming community, can be challenging at times.

But people do fall in love with this town, says Watando. And a huge part of why some of them stay is a sense of potential and creative possibility that’s harder to imagine in the city. She notes that this is certainly true for the employees at Big Eye Company; it’s easier to feel more empowered and try new things at a small, nimble company that’s surrounded by mountains as far as the eye can see.  

How long these young residents will live in Kamikatsu is unclear, but many have stayed longer than they anticipated. Watando is one example: She had moved frequently during her 20s, from Canada to Greenland to Bangladesh, never staying anywhere longer than two years. She assumed this time would be no different. Now, she is entering her fifth year in the town, and is surprised that some of her younger friends, like Otsuka, are still in Kamikatsu. “I thought Momona would’ve left by now,” she said. 

For Van de Velde, the beauty of living here has been coming to realize how little he needs for a good life. Sometimes he and Watando want a change of scenery, so they’ll head out to the cities to see friends, eat Indian food, experience the energy and creativity of the wider world. 

But returning to Kamikatsu is a reset from the city’s constant invitation to consume. When he’s back home in Belgium, he might spend more time on Amazon; he’s never on Amazon here. He has community, meaning, purpose. He and Watando spend their time doing what they want to do: running a sustainable business, growing rice, making their own lacto-fermented tea. These are rare, beautiful things. He tries not to take them for granted.  

https://atmos.earth/introducing-japans-first-zero-waste-town/