Tomitaro Sueishi

(Professor of Osaka University)

Abstract

Our society suffers from severe waste problems as one of the sequelae caused by rapid economic growth which is typically characterized by massive material consumption in urban areas with high anonymity. It is therefore necessary for the resolution of these difficulties to construct a resource recycling society where all semantic features related to goods production, their usage, disuse and consequent effects are made educible. This paper deals with several points of view to internalize the waste management or recycling issue into: product liability laws, economic and regional planning, and semantic correspondence information systems for global resources and products distribution. Especially, low-technology-oriented source separation at the front end of waste generation has been signified in order to guarantee the technological sustainability in the future society.

Key words: Product Liability, resource recycling, semantic correspondence, source separation, technological sustainability