Tadaaki Takemoto

Environmental Management Bureau, Osaka City Government
(6-28, Minami-Ogimachi, Kita-ku, Osaka 530-0052 Japan)

Abstract

The law for recycling post-consumer electronic and electric products and how local (city, town, village) governments should work together. The recycling post-consumer electronic and electric products recycling law was enacted in May 1998, and will take effect in April, 2001 Last December the kinds of products to be recycled was designated and this May, the recycling standard for each designated product was set by the government ordinals. The law obligates manufacturers to recycle, sales companies and stores to take the products back from consumers and to hand them over to manufactures, and consumers to bear the cost of returning and recycling the products. Also, within this system, local governments which should play a supplementary role in collecting the products which are not required to be taken back or ones which someone dumps. However, we have only a year and a half before the law will take effect, and collaboration work among related organizations is making slow progress, in spite of the piling up of many problems to be solved. I'd like to express how we local governments tackled the enforcement between this law, including the working process of local (city, town, village) governments and the electric home appliance industry up until the law was enacted.

Key words: electric home appliances, etc, recycling law, waste that doses difficulties in disposal