Toward A Sustainable Community with Recycling System

2004 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

• Project/Area Number: 15530345
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Sociology
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: URANO Masaki Waseda University, Faculty of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Professor, 文学学術院・文学部, 教授 (20160335)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): USUI Tuneo Waseda University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Professor, 人間科学学術院・人間科学部, 教授 (10193872) ; YOKOTA Naotoshi Yamaguchi University, Faculty of Humanities, Assistant Professor, 人文学部, 助教授 (10240194) ; SHIMOMURA Yasuhiro Tamagawa University, College of Humanities, Lecturer, 文学部, 講師 (00350372)
• Project Period (FY): 2003 – 2004
• Keywords: Community / Urban Sociology / Regional Sociology / Environmental Sociology

Research Abstract

This research was done to clarify a variety of actors taking certain roles for recycling activities and to recognize how each actor relate with other actors under certain circumstances. We focused especially on the history and the status-quo of the wholesale businesses of recycled resources, and on the activities of citizens' groups which had the intention to promote the recycling of resources in order to make a more sustainable society. We have done the following three types of studies.
1)Field studies on the areas where we could find tremendous concentration of the wholesale businesses of recycled resources (Higashi-Nippori Area of Arakawa-ward in Tokyo and Sekibara-Motoki Areas of Adachi-ward in Tokyo).
2)Surveys on the local self-governing body where the local government and the citizens' organizations had been trying collaboratively to make an advanced local recycle system (Kita-ward in Tokyo, Zentuji-city in Kagawa Prefecture, etc.
3)Field studies on a community which was severely a ffected by the tragedy of illegal thrown-away of industry wastes (Teshima-Island in Kagawa Prefecture).
Through these field studies, we can identify the political, economic and social processes of the wholesale businesses of recycled resources concentrating into the outskirts of the city. We can grasp the changing processes of their activities, social status, and everyday lives in relation to the economic growth toward high-consumption society, as well. Surveys on the advanced efforts of making local recycle system showed the possibility of the linkage between the solid-waste recycling movement based on the long experience of community activities and the empowerment efforts by the people of the recycling industry in the modernizing reflexive process.
Field studies on a community severely affected by the illegal thrown-away showed that our environment would receive a huge impact if we failed to control the processes of disposing waste. In such a severely damaged community, the strategy to get well their environment should be based on the strategy for reconstructing more sustainable economic system there.