ENVIRONMENTAL BURDEN OF THE TREATMENT OF HANDLING RESIDUE ARISING FROM THE RECYCLING PROCESS

In Japan, recycling has been actively engaged in an effort to decrease the
environmental burden and conserve resources. However, this activity has generated handling
residue of approximately 20 to 50 percent in the process of recycling. There are a great many
organic materials in the handling residue. These materials are mainly incinerated. Thererore,
there is a discharge of carbon dioxide in the process of residue treatment. In this study, we
estimated the emission of carbon dioxide caused by the incineration of handling residue. The
emission of carbon dioxide was found to be about 1.52 Gg-CO2/year in 2004. This number
corresponds to approximately 7 percent of total emission (23.1 Gg-CO2/year) in the waste
treatment category of Japan, and is likely to have a significant impact on global warming.