Japan maintains world‘s best PET bottle collection rate at 61%

The PET bottle collection rate in Japan was 61.0 percent in fiscal 2003, up 7.6 points from the previous fiscal year, according to the 2004 report on PET bottle recycling issued by the Council for PET Bottle Recycling in September 2004. Japan for Sustainability reports that the actual volume collected was 212,000 tons by municipalities and 55,000 tons by businesses such as supermarkets and railway companies.



The collection rate in Japan is far higher than in the United States (estimated at 19.6 percent in 2003) and Europe (30.0 percent). Although the used PET bottle collection system started in Japan later than in Western countries, in a short period Japan achieved and maintained the world‘‘s highest collection rate.



The turning point was in 1997 when the country‘‘s Containers and Packaging Recycling Law was applied to PET bottles. Since then, efforts to collect PET bottles have spread nationwide. The collection rate by local municipalities has increased rapidly in the past few years, from single digits before the enforcement of the law to 48.5 percent in fiscal 2003. The number of cities, towns and villages that collect PET bottles separately from other waste reached 2,891 by the end of March 2004, an increase to 91.6 percent of all municipalities in Japan. The council expects this number to rise to over 3,000 in fiscal 2004, and their collection rate to be more than 50 percent