Host: Japan Society of Material Cycles and Waste Management
The Eco-Sweets activities are recycling activities of garbage, and are recognized to be the social business with sweets as an end product. It is characterized by a rapid expansion of activity, and various social missions achievement. Such a feature can be explained rationally from the viewpoint of social capital. It is defined as social capital being the feature of a constitution of society called the reliance, norm, and network which can improve social efficiency, and is mainly discussed by two types of a bonding type and a bridging type. A bridging type social capital needs a facilitator who connects various persons and organizations loosely, and is said to pursue public interests. Eco-sweets activity is utilizing bridging type social capital. In our case, the facilitator is taken by the project of Kagoshima University, therefor the result can be created efficiently because of neutrality of University from any interests.
