【Special lssues】Cost of Container Recycling and the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law
Civic Ambitions for the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law
Ikuko Haga
Consumer and Citizen Group
（1-43-4 Wakamiya, Nakano-ku, Tokyo, 165-0033 Japan）

Abstract
Although the Containers and Packaging Recycling Law made the business field take on the burden of recycling for the very first time, the ratio for contributing to recycling is said to be 2:1 or 7:3 between the municipality and businesses. This shows obviously it is taxes that allow this law to get recycling done. Producers, dealers and consumers should absorb the cost of the entire process, from discharge to recycling. To achieve this, the responsibility of the producer must be greater, products with less environmental load at the design phase should be designed, and the cost should be shifted to the production price. The 3R（Reduce, Reuse and Recycle）system of prioritizing stipulates that a society's target should ultimately be the reusing of materials. We conclude that economical countermeasures must be devised, such as a deposit system, in order to accelerate recycling; and we aim to work on amending this law in order to encourage greater recycling of resources in Japan.

Key words: extended producer responsibility, reduction of waste generation, reuse, deposit system, material cycles in one's country