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On 19th of April, the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (SCCU) adopted the following appeal at its board meeting, and delivered it to Minister of Environment. (For information on SCCU, please see overleaf.) Seikatsu Club Appeal for the “Ministerial Conference on the 3R Initiative” 27 April 2005 A “Ministerial Conference on the 3R Initiative” will be held in Japan this coming April 28-30. This conference is the realization of a proposal made by PM Koizumi at the G8 Sea Island Summit last year. In order to realize a global sustainable society in the 21st century, which is being called the century of the environment, it is the duty of the international community to create a resource-recycling society based on the 3R concept (reduce, reuse, recycle ? in that order). As Japanese people, we support and applaud Japan’s active role in attempting to achieve this. However, the real state of 3R in this country is that large amounts of tax money is being spent to promote only one single element of 3R; recycling. Taking the “Ministerial Conference on the 3R Initiative” as a turning point, we at the Seikatsu Club, through our practical activities and documentary reports would like to propose that Japan make a transformation to a 3R society that can be the pride of the world.
These efforts have resulted in the annual reduction of about 7700 t of packaging waste, and the saving to local authorities of about 690 million yen in refuse collection costs. When compared with recycled containers, a calculation on the effect of reduced environmental load through the use of returnable bottles shows a reduction of about 2200 t (about the volume of the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium) of the global warming gas CO2. Further, we are also promoting the retrieval of milk bottle caps to be reformed into plastic bags, and retrieval of “picking bags” (thin film plastic bags used to retail food items from bulk containers) for recycling once more into picking bags. Unfortunately, in contrast to our activities, the use of returnable bottles in society in general has declined drastically. Researching into the reason for this we have found that, “The problem is that the current system uses tax money for collection of items to be recycled.” In other words, business operators themselves bear the costs of retrieval of returnable bottles, but the recovery of recyclable containers is subsidized by taxes, resulting in an incentive for business operators to choose the lower cost container recycling option because of the lower costs incurred to themselves. This system is that of the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law introduced 10 years ago, and can only be said to be extremely insufficient in terms of clarifying the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR). At this time, when the eyes of the world are focused on the stage of the Ministerial Conference, and taking into account that the promotion of the concept of the “3R Initiative” has come from Japan, we demand that a thorough review of the anachronistic rules of the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law be undertaken, and a transformation to a 3R society be carried through by pursuing the principle of the EPR. Outline of the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (SCCU) There are approximately 600 consumer co-operatives with 22,000,000 members in Japan (out of a total population of 127,000,000). From Hokkaido in the north to AichiPrefecture in the south, the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union, (hereafter SCCU) which consists of an association of 25 consumer co-operatives active in 15 administrative divisions (prefectures) of Japan, has altogether 260,000 members, most of whom are women. In addition, there are 7 associated companies such as a milk factory. The SCCU carries out the development, purchasing, distribution, and inspection of consumer materials (food, general daily goods, clothes, publications), operates a mutual assistance fund, and publishes PR and ordering information for pre-order collective purchase. In addition, the entire union works on problems such as GMOs and the environmental hormones issue by setting up committees and establishing projects which are run by SC members and SCCU staff. ■Established: March 12, 1990 Activities of SCCU B SCCU greatly contributed to the reduction of CO2 emissions by using returnable bottles and containers. 44 food items such as soft drinks, soy sauce, and jams are delivered to members in returnable bottles. In 2003, about 8000t of containers and bottles were retrieved, which meant a reduction of about 2200 t (about the volume of the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium) of CO2. The reduction per member was 8.5kg, the volume of a 2m diameter balloon. In fiscal year 2005, SCCU launched the “Action Program for Global Warming Prevention and CO2 Reduction” with the aim of increasing per-member reduction of CO2 emissions from 8.5kg to 10kg in 3 years. SCCU cooperates with national and local governments, business, and NGOs to attain the goal of the Kyoto Protocol, and in addition, works with its producers, members and people in the local communities to prevent global warming.
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Since 1994, the Seikatsu Club has given priority to the selection of returnable bottles as packaging media for culinary seasonings, soft drinks, and so on. Moreover, the bottle specifications have been standardized (R bottle), thereby gaining a huge increase in reuse efficiency (see photo). Currently, bottles of volumes between 200 ml and 1000 ml are in use for 44 food items such as soft drinks, soy sauce, and jams, with a retrieval ratio of just over 80% by weight. Further, since 2000, milk containers have also switched over to returnable bottles, the annual retrieval rate being approximately 99%.
ased on the principles of “Safety, Health, and Environment”, SCCU works in cooperation with producers to develop environmentally-friendly consumer materials, to reduce energy consumption during operation, to make a shift to renewable energy, to promote 3R (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle), and to review lifestyle aspects of production and consumption.