The Fundamental Law for Establishing a Sound Material-Cycle Society aims to build a Sound Material-Cycle Society by stipulating the order for utilization and disposal as : reduce, reuse, recycle, thermal collection and suitable disposal of waste. Greater effort is required, however, in the case of the steps of reduce and reuse, what has come to be called The 2Rs. The Ministry of the Environment of Japan has been examining new measures for promoting these concepts, including analyzing the environmental effects of waste reduction through The 2Rs and conducting various trials related to The 2Rs. These include reducing the use of paper cups and packaging for meat and promoting the use of the Carry my Own Bag concept. This paper provides an overview of recent policy trends.

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This article presents an overview of recent movements in waste prevention and reuse in EU and North America, and summarizes the trends from the three viewpoints of object, policy instrument, and jurisdiction. In these countries, methods to measure the effectiveness of waste prevention activities and systems for sharing information on good practices are being developed, and the importance of partnerships is being emphasised. Most countries are concerned with food waste, paper waste, packaging waste, and disposable nappies, while several countries are also paying attention to commercial, industrial, and/or hazardous wastes. Although many of the waste prevention activities are quite similar to those being practiced in Japan, there are some that Japan can learn from. An example is the introduction of coaching methods to promote waste prevention and material reuse.

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Promotion of the 2Rs (Reduce and Reuse), with a particular focus on Reduce, are crucial factors in transitioning to a sound material-cycle society. In this paper, the authors introduce Herasou Shopping, what can be regarded as a Public Marketing Approach (PMA) that is being spearheaded by an NPO called Gomi Japan as a guideline for reducing consumer activities. PMA are generally created to address politically difficult questions by converting a political decision into a market competition in order to develop a de facto standard. Herasou Shopping is a unique approach aimed at supporting the shift to a sustainable society and is expected to be used as a complementary tool.

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This paper presents an overview of basic information on waste prevention research as a means of successfully developing it for the future. A range of waste prevention studies were surveyed in order to indicate the type of studies that have been conducted so far. These cover studies such as estimation of the reduction and reduction-potential of waste and other environmental loads achieved by waste prevention behaviors ; the effectiveness of waste prevention programs ; factors related to waste prevention behaviors ; etc. The paper introduces a set of waste prevention performance indicators, which categorize waste prevention behaviors and link them to actual waste reduction. Finally, the authors also indicate several issues they feel the field of waste prevention research should currently be addressing.

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