An environmental evaluation of household garbage processors.

The amount of garbage emitted from households and industries has been constantly increasing in recent years, and its treatment cost has been a financial burden to municipal governments in Japan. Many municipal governments recommend that their citizens purchase household garbage processors in order to reduce the volume of garbage transferred to and incinerated at their facilities. Actually, 1535 municipal governments subsidize their citizens' purchase of electrical garbage processors and/or compost containers. These subsidies should be assessed from various points of view, such as the costs and benefits to municipal governments and citizens, and also global or local environmental loads. An environmental planning department of a city office sent questionnaires to its residents to investigate the utilization of the subsidized devices. An environmental organization of citizens supported the department with design of the questionnaire form and analysis of the collected questionnaire data. In this paper, the processes of designing the form and analyzing the data are explained, and then an evaluation of the subsidy is presented. The conclusions are as follows: Electrical garbage processors would be beneficial for dealing with local environmental problems such as lack of a final landfill site. However, the processors will increase CO2 emissions unless their electrical consumption efficiency can be improved. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 93(7): 42–52, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (<URL>www.interscience.wiley.com</URL>). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10285 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]