I filled my glass with clear water from the kitchen tap. As I watched the moisture condense around the cup, I wondered about where the sweet, cool tap water came from. This was no ordinary city tap. I was living in a guesthouse at a farm in Yamanashi, a Japanese prefecture bordering the western edge of Tokyo. I would spend two weeks living on this farm with a group of students from around the world, doing volunteer work for the farm owner and getting to know the local community.

I asked the farm owner where our drinking water came from. He explained to me that the water came from a spring in the mountains above the farm. Furthermore, the water received no treatment before we drank it. The pristine water simply flowed through a pumping station and arrived at our taps.

Yamanashi is famous throughout Japan for its fruit and fruit products; the prefecture produces more grapes, peaches, and plums than any other prefecture (fruits make up half of its agricultural production). Much of the land is undeveloped; roughly 1/3 of the prefecture consists of protected “natural parks.” A vast network of natural rivers and streams provide farmers with abundant water.

The Rise of Bottled Water

Yamanashi is also famous for its water. In 2005, Yamanashi shipped nearly ¥14.8 billion (approximately $144 million in present day dollars, accounting for inflation) in mineral water. This activity accounted for 23.5% of the national revenues from mineral water that year.

Many people in Japan appreciate mineral water for its therapeutic and medicinal properties (whether or not the water actually possesses these properties is another matter). Thousands of public bathhouses called “onsen” are scattered throughout Japan. These onsen provide people with large spas full of mineral water, and different onsen offer different waters. Some onsen offer water rich in sulfur, others in metals like iron, and others in bicarbonate. Locals often bring water jugs to the onsen so they can bring some of the water back home for future drinking or bathing.

Bottling companies have taken advantage of Japan’s well-established mineral water niche. According to the Japan Mineral Water Association, bottled water sales surged from 414,800 kiloliters in 1993 to 1,374,500 kiloliters in 2002 –an increase of over 230% in under 10 years. The per capita consumption of bottled water was 3.3 liters in 1993 and 10.8 liters in 2002. In 2001, Japanese consumers could choose from nearly 450 domestic brands and 50 imported brands of bottled water. Until visiting Japan, I had never heard of bars serving more than a few brands of bottled water. At a bar in Shibuya, you can apparently choose from some 48 brands of water.

Japan’s bottled drink industry, let alone bottled water industry, is huge. In Tokyo I never found myself farther than a block from a beverage vending machine. In 2003 there were 2.6 million beverage vending machines on the streets of Japan. Most drink vending machines sell bottled mineral water, soda, juice, tea, vitamin and electrolyte water, and even coffee. Nearly all of the drinks are sold in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) #1 plastic bottles. Once you are done with the drink, you are supposed to drop the PET bottle into a recycling bin.

Plastics Abound

All numbers are derived from information in the Japan Plastic Waste Management Institute’s 2004 publication “An Introduction to Plastic Recycling.”

About 14.5% of Japan’s mechanically recycled plastic waste comes from PET bottles alone (mechanical recycling is the conversion of a waste material to other useful materials). In 2004, Japan mechanically recycled 1,520,000 tons of plastic –220,000 tons came from PET bottles. About 15% of Japan’s total plastic waste was mechanically recycled that year. Roughly 45% of total plastic waste was disposed in landfills or simply incinerated without energy recovery, and the nearly 40% remaining was used to produce fuels or burned to produce energy. More recent data is unavailable, but present day recycling, disposal, and incineration rates are likely to be similar.

Important 2004 values:

• 9.9 million tons total plastic waste produced
• 1.52 million tons of plastic waste mechanically recycled (15% of total)
• 1.73 million tons of plastic simply incinerated (18% of total)
• 2.76 million tons of plastic disposed in landfill (28% of total)
• 3.89 million tons of plastic used for fuel and energy production (39% of total)

Shocked by the Japanese numbers? When you compare plastic waste production in Japan to plastic waste production in the United States, Japan doesn’t look so bad. According to the US EPA, the US produced 28.9 million tons of plastic waste in 2005. Just 1.65 million tons of this waste was recovered for recycling (less than 6% of total plastic waste).

Japan’s plastic recycling rate is more than double the United States’ recycling rate (by mass).

The Environmental Cost of Bottled Water

Bottling water into plastic containers has environmental costs. According to the Pacific Institute, producing the bottles for the American bottled water market required “the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation.”

Some facts about bottled water, according to the Pacific Institute:

• Manufacturing one ton of PET produces about 3 tons of CO2 emissions.
• Three liters of water are required to produce one liter of bottled water because bottle production also requires water.
• It takes about 3.4 megajoules of energy to make an average one-liter plastic bottle.

If one simply must obtain mineral water (it is a product, after all), then bottling is the best available way to get it. Bottling distant waters and shipping them to your local store is more efficient than personally traveling across the world to try the water at the source. But do we really need to drink mineral water? Bottled waters may not be as safe and healthy as people say they are.

Click here for a detailed list of bottled water recalls in the United States. Some bottled waters were recalled for mold, odors, and even cricket contamination.

Mata ne! (Japanese for “see you next time!”)

Tags: Bottled Water, Recyling, Yamanashi Japan
Posted in BLOG, Culture, Energy, Water Resources | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Yamanashi, Japan: water, plastics, recycling, resources”

1. Yoshi Pablo says:

   October 28, 2011 at 4:47 am

   What is the total percentage of plastic that is being recycled in Japan? I know you have some percentages but i would like to know the total percentage of the number of plastic that is recycled in Japan.

   Reply