Edo-Tokyo Museum Diorama
I stumbled across this interesting article a while ago about how there was pretty much no garbage in Japan’s Edo Period because almost everything got recycled.
I translated it into English, but it’s a bit long, so if you’re like me and have the attention span of a three-year old from using the Internet too much, here’s the Reader’s Digest version:
Everyday life in Japan’s Edo Period would today be known as a recycling society. They didn’t just recycle to reduce garbage; they had a mentality of valuing things and completely using everything up. For those of us who live in Japan’s disposable society of today, there might be a lot of things we can learn from the Edo Period recycling mentality.
One type of recycler was the collector. Things were so valuable that people could make a living by collecting scraps and garbage. Collectors employed by public bathhouses went around looking for anything they could burn, even garbage, to save on expenses ,and paper buyers bought up used books and scrolls. Paper was so valuable that poor people were actually able to scrape out a living by going around looking for scraps of paper on the street. Scrap metal collectors would give candy to kids in exchange for old nails and other bits of scrap metal and there were even dealers who bought ashes from fires.
Even human excrement was valuable. One of the most bizarre recyclers in the Edo Period was the “night soil” collector, who bought human and animal excrement and sold it for fertilizer. (This isn’t in the article, but I’ve read it was so valuable there were even cases where criminals would steal it.)
There were thousands of used clothing shops, and Japanese clothing was ideal for recycling because kimono were cut straight in equal proportions with no waste, so even if it was old clothes or old rags, they were all standardized goods. From this point of view, they were completely different from Western clothes–if Western clothes are taken apart, they are all different sizes and have no value and cannot be recycled the way kimono were.
Repairers, the second main category of recyclers, would usually travel from house to house. You could get your knives sharpened, have someone resurface your mirror, ask them to put new teeth put in your clogs, or have your broken bowls glued, all without leaving the comfort of your own home.
The full article is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »
