Ken Morishita

Eco-Management Institute
(1-9 Nanpeidai-cho, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150 Japan)

Abstract

In order to promote appropriate waste management, especially for the reduction of waste and recycling, it is quite important to promote not only methodology for rules and economics, but also Eco-labels, which recommend environmentally approved products (such as recycled goods) to consumers; and green procurement, which means the consumers' active purchasing of these products. Recently, Eco-labels and green procurement have been clearly endorsed by the Law for Promotion of Sorted Collection and Recycling of Containers and Packaging, the Basic Environment Law, and the Basic Environment Plan. Therefore, these ideas have attracted attention and made rapid progress. I discuss the present situation of these two systems in this paper.

Key words: Eco-labels, Eco-mark, green procurement, the Action Plan for Greening Government Operations, green procurement network