To shift from a one-way-use society to a recycling-based society, the Basic Law for Establishing a Recycling-Based Society was enacted in May 2000. In this law, “Recycling-Based Society” defines a society where the consumption of natural resource is kept at a low level and the environmental load is reduced as much as possible by preventing products from becoming waste, promoting the appropriate recycling of products, and securing appropriate disposal. Based on the law, the Government of Japan formulated “The Basic Plan for Establishing a Recycling-Based Society” in a Cabinet decision on March 2003. The purpose of the plan is to promote comprehensive and systematic policies for establishing a recycling-based society. Furthermore, the plan serves as a ten-year program aimed at changing unsustainable patterns of production and consumption into sustainable ones based on the Plan of Implementation of the WSSD, which was established in September 2002. The plan shows the image of a Recycling-Based Society and some quantitative targets for three indicators based on material flow accounts : resource productivity, cyclical use rate and final disposal amount, and for effort indices including the amounts of garbage discharged from households per person per day.

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In March 2003, “The Basic Plan for Establishing a Recycling-Based Society”was established in a cabinet decision. In accordance with a mandate by“The Basic Plan for Environment”which is precedent over this Plan, quantitative targets for material flow indicators and those for effort indicators were examined and eventually adopted. Recent progress in material flow studies at international level contributed to this process. The adopted material flow indicators put focus on three aspects of material flow around the economy : input, cyclic use, and output. The respective indicators are resource productivity, rate of reused and recycled materials to total inflows, and final disposal amounts of industrial and municipal solid wastes. A material flow model describing the relationship among key variables of the economy and material use, as well as structural decomposition analysis of resource productivity, were employed to determine the quantitative target levels of these indicators. A few other technical points are also discussed in the paper.

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Aichi Prefecture is the center of industrial production in Japan. This region is responsible for making an effort to establish a recycling-based society, and is working toward this goal more earnestly than any other region. The Aichi Plan for Establishing a Recycling-Based Society has been developed through this working program. The Aichi Plan, sets fiscal year 2010 as its target date, and describes several integral points based on material flow in the Prefecture, as well as roles of the public, businesses and local governments.

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Living in the 21st century, we seek methods for the realization of sustainable societies. The expected roles of citizens and their activities in such an era must be largely expanded to include a review of current lifestyles, cooperation between businesses and consumers, the promotion of environmental education at the community level, etc.
In order to make progress in these specific areas, it is important for citizens themselves to participate by creating working relationships with people in various social sectors, developing stronger networks, and working together on many levels.
Throughout Japan, the efforts of the people are gradually showing progress in the creation of “environmentally-friendly communities based on such active partnerships”

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The Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. manufactures diverse home office and industrial electronic and electric equipment and products, as well as parts and semiconductors for them. The company consumes many resources to produce components and parts for its products and also uses energy, water, and other global resources at the manufacturing stage. At every phase of the life cycle down to disposal, it seeks to save and effectively utilize resources, reduce the environmental load and the amount of waste, etc. according to the plan. Both the Environmental Management Policy and the Environmental Vision were established to help the entire group push forward and carry out the plan in concert. In addition, a certain target to be reached by 2010 has been set as a goal for the action plan; thus a definite program was presented and has been undertaken. The concept of environmental efficiency was introduced for products. For the purpose of better resource utilization, life-cycle resource quantity is envisaged with life-cycle material flow taken into account in the light of resource efficiency. Attention is also being given to the reduction and prohibition of environmentally harmful substances as environmental-loads, and special importance has been given to the recycling aspect of our manufacturing activities. Instances of our recycling-oriented environmental business activities are presented in this paper.

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