An experimental study on waste paper recovery system for medium and small-size enterprises

Although rapid growth of registered industrial waste and domestic waste was settled down, amount of waste from a business sector, mainly small and medium size enterprises was still increasing. These wastes are not included within the 19 kinds of registered industrial waste, and a local government holds a responsible for its final treatment. It is necessary to clarify the key factors why recycling and reuse of these wastes was disturbed. One of the important items was found to be a waste paper. Tokyo University of Information Sciences (TUIS) and Chiba city municipal government was conducted a joint study. The aim of this study is to develop an effective recycling system of waste paper for small and medium size enterprises. In this experiment, a collection bag was distributed to 19 partner offices and the partner put this bag at the corner of the office or an appropriate place in the building. 5 companies of waste paper recovery in Chiba city cooperated with our experiment, and collected the waste papers from the collection bag by the regular sampling duration. The amount of the collected papers was measured at the same time. Consequently, a magazine and mixed paper occupied the majority. Next was a corrugated cardboard. It was found that almost offices could not segregate the papers sufficiently. After the experiment, second questionnaire survey was carried out for the partner enterprises.