Current Issues and Challenges of E-waste Management in Japan - after Revised Domestic Waste Regulations and China’s Waste Import Ban -

Japan has made an effort to build a Sound Material-Cycle Society in the 21st century. In fact, Japan had exported various recyclable resources such as metal scrap and waste plastic to China and other countries. In order to improve international material cycles, Japanese government revised Waste Management Act and Basel Act in 2017. Revised Waste Management Act newly covers the “listed e-waste (hazardous end-of-life equipment)” that had hardly been regulated and requests the entity that store and/or dispose of them to notify to prefectures and to follow the standards. Revised Basel Act strengthened the export control for the listed e-waste, while it introduced authorization system of importers and recyclers as mitigation of import control of electronic scrap. Both revised Waste Management Act and Basel Act were enforced in 2018. On the other hand, Chinese government announced so called “National Sword” in 2017 cracking down the import of foreign waste. Due to this China’s waste import ban rather than the above revised domestic regulations, the export of mixed metal scrap (“Zappin scrap”) and waste plastic from Japan to China has dramatically declined since 2018. Various types of e-waste remained in Japan and they seem to enter small-sized e-waste recycling facilities. Most of those recycling facilities have shredders and they face shortage of shredder residue disposal channels. Our challenge of e-waste management in Japan is how to recycle value-less e-waste and to reduce residues.