Trashopolis S02 E03: Tokyo

here in Tokyo one of the biggest brightest most crowded highest tech cities in the world trash is more than garbage it builds expensive neighborhoods the city is built on trash heat swimming pools and turns birds into bombers this produce owes and it puts his claws right into my shoulder blade [Applause] [Music] Tokyo is one of the richest and most densely populated cities on the planet with over 33 million of the most resilient motivated and well-organized workers every morning when rush hour begins the city swells and the sidewalks overflow and with so many more people here there's a lot more trash and a lot more work for these guys now you ain't no hole goddess so here it is United this proud Tokyo sanitation crew collects garbage in Shibuya one of the busiest paper hoods in the city every year Shibuya generates over a hundred and twenty thousand tons of trash these guys are good efficient and serious about their trash yet always polite [Music] Ginza should be aquaeden GJ there are 208 people working everyday to collect garbage how did you and eighty eight trucks working everyday in Shibuya - issues you want to put in us one driver and two collectors for every truck shoo-shoo cannot deem us why - well - may be needed when picking up heavy garbage by hand and what they're gonna leave us also shibuya has many narrow streets so they can help direct the driver when maneuvering in tight places are backing us open up the news [Music] don't let appearances fool you these pint-sized trucks can compact over two tons of trash in a single load with their trucks belly full the team heads for the nearest incinerator actua dismiss ASO kojocho no what about so much muscle your risk or deny dismissal the Toshima plant is one of Tokyo's 21 impeccably clean incinerators fed by a fleet of 300 trucks it devours over 330 tons of garbage a day the polished steel door some spotless floor of Toshima x' garbage Depot testified to the Japanese love for order and cleanliness [Music] the garbage is weighed and then dumped into a hopper a crane lifts it into the incinerator lead engineer masa Yuki pseudo old Anka I tell my old mother Antonio as the garbage is fed from the hopper to this chamber sand is mixed in and heated to 600 degrees as it enters the incinerator it is immediately burned to ash the temperature rises to about 900 degrees the Toshima incinerator is a minor masterpiece of technology but no accident its design was enhanced thanks to some very tough neighborhood activists so Cujo on all those who operate waste incineration plans constantly hear concerns expressed by the local population regardless smells toxic emissions and so you know what I say we take a message the neighbors had cause for concern in the 60s and 70s Japan's economy skyrocketed often at the expense of the city's public health and the environment so the Toshima residents protested and forced the city to install noise suppression devices build a 210 meters smokestack high enough to carry vapors and toxic particles away from the neighborhood a health center for the elderly and our favorite a garbage heated swimming pool here the waters are heated to a steamy 32 degrees Celsius by tens of thousands of tons of burning garbage heating up a swimming pool is no sweat for the Toshima incinerator what really gets this furnace hot is powering generators enough juice to light up nine thousand Japanese homes full of computers and gadgets for a year [Music] Tokyo's incinerators vaporize a lot of trash but what they can't burn metals ash and sand from the incinerators they dumped into Tokyo Bay this is nothing new 400 years ago when Tokyo was called Edo it's 1 million residents dump their trash into the bays and waterways over the centuries so much trash has been dumped that six massive islands of garbage have risen out of the water and the city has expanded its land mass by over 87 square kilometers but today things are changing only one garbage island is still open and growing the Chabot landfill now mr. tewara oversees the process here power not the most must correspond he must according to mr. tewara almost 700 tons of ash and send from Tokyo's incinerators and debris from construction sites is dumped here every day first the in combustible garbage is buried in a sandwich configuration after the dumped waste is three meters deep it's covered with 50 meters of earth then another three meters of garbage 50 meters of Earth and so on until the landfill is complete the layers put a tight wrap on all the trash but not quite tight enough to keep a lid on all the juicy garbage fluids our landfill sites are not allowed to disperse polluted water out into the sea so we have various treatment facilities chile system autonomous this plant digests the landfills liquid trash and returns nothing but clean water to the bay but trash at the landfill creates an even nastier by-product very explosive methane gas ventilation pipes release some of it but most of the methane is harvested and used to power the landfills facilities Chabot is a model landfill but it's days are numbered it will soon be filled to capacity and like cities everywhere Tokyo will have to find new and better ways to get rid of reduce and even reinvent its trash this massive island of trash will be transformed into a lush green public space just like some of Tokyo's other garbage aisles longtime Tokyo resident Mik Corliss where on Tokyo Bay this is a marina and we are standing on you may know Shima or roughly translated dream island this is an island that was built of garbage as a way to store their trash and maybe make something useful out of it and you can see around here there's a lot of greenery we have this marina here so this is a unique land reclamation that you'll see if you come to Tokyo dream Island was once the main garbage dump for all of Tokyo's trash now it's an urban oasis of tropical forests baseball diamonds and soccer fields it actually creates more land for the country which is an added benefit and it helps them to get rid of the waste without destroying their mountains raising their mountains digging holes and building stinky landfills making more land desperately needed in this overcrowded city [Music] Tokio population 33 million and rising almost 6000 people on every square kilometer of a city that's fast running out of space not just for living but also for trash and yet this is one of the cleanest cities in the world teams of Sanitation police patrol the sidewalks writing tickets for littering and smoking on public sidewalks and the rules are just as strict at home my name is motoki bata i teach literature at the university of tokyo i am tony Shibata welcome to our house moto and his wife they told me live in the otter ward in a house built on a plot of land moto inherited from his family in japan putting out the trash is an art it requires the patience of a Buddhist monk and a Tokyo trash bible this is from the the ward office and this explains what kind of stuff all considered insane herbals and what kind of stuff are considered recyclables almost a quarter of Tokyo's trash goes to the landfill the rest is recycled or incinerated household trash is sorted into three categories incinerators recyclables and non burnable these are inner Buhl's and they come for them twice a week considerable include clothing solid waste and food scraps this is recyclables newspapers magazines recyclables must be bundled and tied or bagged paper labels and caps have to be removed bottles rinsed and crushed the third category not burnable include metals small electrical appliances and umbrellas if it all seems like a lot of work moto has to admit he can't really say because my wife does most of the work violations of the city garbage and recycling codes are taken seriously for large items residents must purchase stickers from a local shop and if they don't or if they buy the wrong one they're subject to a hefty fine but the garbage workers are not the first to arrive it's the scavengers who collect bottles and cans and these days their work is easy because in Tokyo trash cans have been banned from the streets it's a city ordinance enacted in 1995 after the infamous armed cult led by all machinery Keogh planted sarin gas and explosives in Tokyo subway cars [Music] 12 people were killed in almost 1,000 others hospitalized as a precaution the city removed an outlawed trash cans from the streets but the new law created a new problem Tokyo residents became vulnerable to another kind of predator [Music] tens of thousands of trash eating and trash-talking Black Crowes and they don't just rip open garbage bags and mess up the streets they attack [Music] and this protis comes down I didn't even know what's happening it just it gets on my it goes it puts his claws as talons right into my shoulder blade and it's screams right my ear konnichiwa Tomas savolta Wanda's Tom boatman is the CEO and owner of a Tokyo advertising company and he's been targeted by crows not once but twice and I'm running through this park one day maybe five years later and I'm coming into this area and there were a lot of crows around and all of a sudden this one comes down and just swoops me buzzes me like just inches above my head thousands have been trapped and exterminated but the crows are multiplying faster than they could be caught and not everyone agrees that killing them is the best solution the only action ok no stick you think you get I'm psycho mas mas for mr. hands I the crows of Tokyo hold a special fascination among living things this is one of the most intelligent species furthermore it's um nippers and can figure out how to eat anything one thing we particularly note is that among these intelligent crows their numbers are stable like the Palmdale garbage is a reliable food resource and predators such as Fox are rare as for the reports of dive-bombing crows and zai says it's a case of self-defense hello some people are afraid of crows and there are many stories about them actually attacking people but that is most certainly in the breeding season to protect their young the parents will react if someone happens to approach too close to the nest even unintentionally then since Tokyo's ban on public garbage bins invited every crow to a free curbside buffet the best way to reduce their population is to reduce the food supply by covering up trash with nylon anti crow Nets nipped on the shooter's eat you up there are three types of nets large small and the net box here we use a large net because a large amount of garbage is deposited here these nets are real crow Stoppers it's a low-tech solution for a high-tech town Tokyo is one of the brightest busiest most expensive and most crowded cities on earth but this glitzy town is running out of places to dump its trash there's never been a lot of room on this tiny island where the homes are so small that just living in one has become an art form hello we're now in the neighborhood of Numa bakudo Numa bokudoh is located just about 10 minutes away from the center of Tokyo here is Sakura house Numa bokudoh let's take a look inside we have several studio apartments on the first floor I'll be introducing you to apartment number 103 let's take a look inside first in Japan we always take off our shoes and then we hop in so this is inside the apartment and at Sakura house everything comes furnished you have your own bed your air conditioner and inside here is your own private bathroom and shower and here you have your kitchen area that's it but if you can't even swing a cat in these tiny Tokyo apartments about the only thing you can do in this hotel is roll over parts of this capsule hotel are almost only good for one thing sleeping even Tokyo cemeteries are running out of space and unless you can afford millions for a family plot you'll end up spending eternity in a brass plated shoebox Tokyo is not just one of the most efficient cities in the world it's one of the cleanest for the Japanese it's a matter of civic responsibility and pride but they've had a lot of practice this recycling entrepreneur is doing it almost the same way it was done over 400 years ago Chieko Nakayama yes mr. Nakayama is a recycler of tatami mats the traditional Japanese floor covering I used to work tearing down houses we would end up with so many tatami mats to disposal that they all had to be burned I thought this was a waste and started looking for ways to recycle them to this day the size of a Japanese apartment is still measured by the number of tatami mats required to cover the floors mr. Nakayama screwed Terrace and recycles about 60 mats a day 300 a week a few years ago a pile of old tatami mats sparked a friendship between mr. Nakayama and ASPI Brown an author architect and expert in Japanese interior design I asked him what he does with them and he said I take them apart and sell the recycled straw to farmers said you're kidding and that's how they used to do in the idle period it was remarkable period because it was such a thoroughly sustainable society they had very limited resources and they made use of everything and didn't waste a darned thing [Music] this was a peak of Japanese culture when we think of the Japanese tradition this was the time where all those things fell into place wooden architecture that Shoji screens with the paper on them the mats on the floor wonderful food that we now think of Japanese cuisine almost all the designs and traditional artworks these all came from this Edo period [Music] [Applause] the Edo period began in the early 17th century when the government closed off the country to the rest of the world and forced the population to become self-sufficient the biggest city in Japan was called Edo now known as Tokyo in the 1800's the population reached one and a quarter million larger than any city in Europe huge population and all these people who were recycling they were all doing it the city governor the Shogun at a created the city's first official sanitation department lots of garbage got hauled away but lots of other stuff got recycled the way that Japanese of the period dealt with human waste is remarkable and there's something we can learn a lot from in Edo the Japanese didn't flush they shoveled and recycled almost all of their waste sewage brokers collected feces and urine from the city dwellers and sold it to the farmers getting to the farmers who needed it and they were able to increase their agricultural production several fold because of this shipping the sewage off to the farmers also made for a much healthier City because all the urine and feces that might have leaked into the springs and wells was taken away the water supply remained clean and contaminant free and the horrifying epidemics of cholera dysentery and malaria that wiped out so many Europeans for centuries never made it to Japan and this system of using human waste for agriculture really persisted well into the 20th century even after the Second World War they were still using it even though they recycled everything they could there was still plenty of stuff left over some kinds of trash or objects or you know crockery or whatever and these would be collected from a central garbage pickup point in the neighborhoods and brought out and and used for landfill as the decades and centuries passed the landfills grew the city expanded and the trash covered shoreline turned into the most expensive neighborhood in all of Tokyo if you go to Ginza today what you'll see is a beautiful modern city lots of wonderful lights big buildings wide avenues we think of this as being a quintessential part of Tokyo but what a lot of people don't realize is that just a few hundred years ago that was open ocean Ginza is like New York's Fifth Avenue lined with the most expensive shops high-priced gadgets designer clothing perfumes and furs just meters above centuries of garbage the city is built on trash and it has been this way for such a long time Tokio the city that keeps finding new ways to put his garbage to work its long-lasting relationship with trash is about to take a new turn thanks to a new generation as creative energetic and as ingenious as their ancestors every weekend Harajuku Street explodes with a flamboyant parade of color and style an oasis of personal expression [Music] for Westerners like Jared Braverman formerly of San Francisco Tokyo is a city of inspiration so from that oak period of zero waste I think what Japan has experienced in the 20th century in the beginning of this century has been a tremendous amount of change fast pace changed that's really unthinkable on the Western scale and plenty of that change has been wrought by an explosive history of both man-made and natural disasters the recent 9.0 scale earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan killed thousands and left many more homeless Tokyo was largely spared but it hasn't always been so lucky the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 leveled the city tremendous amount of debris and garbage was pushed right into the rivers in just five minutes the earthquake released more energy than all the bombs of World War two killer shockwave spinned the Richter scale needles at seven point nine in the first two minutes 15,000 people were buried alive in the aftermath over 140,000 people died Tokyo was on its knees the city's infrastructure was destroyed some urged the government to relocate the capital but Tokyo's mayor bravely refused rebuilding roads plumbing and sewage systems [Music] then came the Second World War the city was just beginning to recover by the time World War two happened Tokyo was fire bombed during the war and almost the entire city destroyed through aerial bombing we think about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as being great 20th century crimes but actually the firebombing of Tokyo was incredibly destructive of human life and of the city [Music] once again Tokyo rebuilt itself from the ground up after the war tire city had to be rebuilt practically from scratch and Japan went through an amazingly fast Ariat of construction by the time the 1964 Olympics came to town Tokyo's urban planners were moving so fast that the once airy and spacious city was beginning to choke on what Brae Terman sees as modern trash and in time for the Tokyo Olympics they decided it would be a great idea to build as many freeways through the city as possible so basically everywhere that you had a river that used to be a center of Commerce it used to be a place to bring goods used to be a place to actually fish and eat from all of them became overshadowed by these these elevated freeways which was viewed as the epitome of modernity with City Planning when you create something as massive as a as the elevated freeway system you're stuck with them for decades and decades and decades but according to Bray Turman Tokyo is beginning to talk about giving the streets back to the people people in Japan who are arguing especially in Tokyo about removing freeways they're arguing about making it more of a people centered city and replacing a trashy freeway culture with a newer and greener way for the future other arguments for getting rid of these elevated freeways I include the heat island effect it can be incredibly unbearably hot here and it's because of the reflecting concrete but it's known that they'd be cooler breezes coming from the bay circulating through the city if the rivers were functioning the way they used to function Tokyo is an extraordinary metropolis of steel and concrete a few remains of the past like this 12th century Edo shrine still stand but space is so tight and demand for new construction is so high that some engineers have elevated the business of demolition to an art form Tajima consits of tokyo came to boost a motor kazakh care project pochittona tava communist the kijima construction company is building a new high-rise smack in the middle of one of the busiest parts of Tokyo [Music] but before they started putting this building up they had to tear the old one down and that's when the kijima engineers got a crazy idea to tear the building down from the bottom up they do die usually tall buildings are demolished from the top of the building or by dismantling with heavy equipment good night the question Kawa commies revolutionary technique starts from the bottom and goes up one floor at a time after each floors debris is trucked off to be recycled hydraulic jacks gently lower the whole building down so the next level can be demolished sorted and carted off at six days per floor it took over 11 months to demolish this building a 97% of the stuff was recycled stuff I hate I say Porter the company considers it to be a great success I'm expecting continued success despite all the glitter and shine of this thoroughly modern city over the centuries some things have changed very little like the great Tsukiji fish market the largest and busiest fish market in the world [Music] the real-estate the market now occupies was once open water in the Tokyo Harbor 80 years ago it was filled in with trash and converted into a solid foundation [Music] today the market feeds 30 million people every day all of the fish is fresh off the boats frozen at sea or still alive the Japanese love for fish is almost unlimited if it swims crawls or even just floats they'll eat it but one thing everyone is really picky about his freshness these fish mongers yield the sharpest knives in the world and nothing not a head a scrap or a bone goes to waste [Music] this is Noriyuki he's making his rounds collecting tuna fish heads and fish guts the fish waste is turned into soap margarine and pet food half of the market's trash is fish waste but the other half of the trash is styrofoam and that takes us to a less fishy corner of the market ataxia kuji-shi on either happily Oh open up Karina's nakamura-san Iacobucci national seminar nakamura tamao us [Music] mr. Nakamura's company recycles almost all of the styrofoam that the fish is shipped in about 12,000 kilos a day listen air-cool a kaijus at first of all the styrofoam collected here is removed crushed and carried up to the tank treated with friction heat and pressed into Inga's die booboo medicine a anapana most of it goes to Southeast Asia mainly China according to mr. Nakamura Japan's Styrofoam consumption patterns are very different than other countries new knew each other's name in Japan eating fish raw as sashimi and sushi is a very common custom so freshness is vital in order to retain freshness even after long-distance transport large quantities of styrofoam are used the Tsukiji fish market sells more than just fish you can buy all kinds of stuff from electronics to stuffed animals and you can eat some of the freshest raw fish in the world delivered straight to you on a conveyor belt whatever fish comes your way you can bet your bottom yen it came packed in styrofoam and by the time you sit down to eat the styrofoam has been processed and is on its way to China where chances are it'll end up in a flat-screen TV or as a picture frame or even as a kid's toy landfill's of trash a swollen Tokyo shoreline into some of the most valuable and brightly lit real estate in the world with a population of over 33 million Tokyo's residents are always on the go rush-hour is not for the faint of heart and with most people spending two to three hours a day commuting it might help explain Tokyo's obsession with vending machines [Music] Japan has more vending machines per capita than any other country in the world the latest statistics I saw say that there are one for every 23 people in Japan you can buy almost anything from the 1.5 million vending machines that line Tokyo streets soft drinks beer cigarettes whiskey steaming hot ramen and uh done bowls magazines and even live lobsters buying a can of hot ramen noodle soup it's very cold evening in Tokyo and this soup is 300 yen which is a few dollars when I'm ready to eat I take the fork already attached don't even need to know how to use chopsticks as soon as I can get it out of its plastic it's quite a bit of plastic in Japan [Music] Tokyo's vending machine culture is one of the world's prime culprits in the generation of plastic disposable trash and the Japanese love for vending machines is only outdone by their love for packaging I happen to think Tokyo is the most convenient city in the world it's so easy to get a meal so easy to get something when you're on the run but this produces a lot of garbage but weird while the machines go when they lose their shine and forget how to make the proper change whole vending machines never really die they go to a very noisy little factory on the edge of Tokyo Bay [Music] Reeth M company recycles personal computers and cell phones some of the work is done by hand with a bit of old-fashioned elbow grease but when it comes to the big stuff like tearing apart vending machines and ATMs there's no beating a 50-foot crane and a giant garbage disposal it's a man-made gold rush because locked inside the brains of all these dead machines are loads of precious metals these workers can mine up to 1500 grams of gold for every ton of trash that is a high tech gold mine as I know from a company's point of view a metal is basically a metal and can be used over and over again reet M is doing good business helping Tokyo keep a lid on its trash [Music] but the city is working hard too in one of the biggest cleanups of the century my name is Maha Shivratri Hartke Shibuya I'm a water resources management expert here in Tokyo these are the cleansing pools of the Sunnah Maki water reclamation Center millions of gallons of dirty water flushed from Tokyo's toilets and kitchen sinks booze through these pipes and holding tanks before the water goes back into Tokyo Bay it comes here to the advanced treatment part of the plant and then it goes through aeration and then secondary treatment which is what you're seeing here to remove all the debris sand and the dunks butts in the water the secondary treatment is a defensive tactic against dangerous red tides floating islands of algae toxic to sea life and humans the red tides are a problem a significant problem in any marine environment because they are toxic to marine life so here in Tokyo Bay the fact that they're occurring are a problem for the bay marine life [Music] after the water has been treated all that remains is heavy black goo of concentrated raw sewage [Music] and that sludge is toxic it's full of Gotham yucky stuff and to get rid of it you either burn it and burning it produces greenhouse gas emissions or you try to find some more innovative way of dealing with it and Tokyo has built here the carbonization furnace the new carbonization plant heats up the sludge removes the water and converts it into charcoal which is sold to power plants as fuel tokyo is actually a really striking example an inspiring example because they've gone from very polluted to clean and so it is possible if you invest the money and the resources and the brainpower the neurons to make it happen it is possible to make it happened for Marissa Shibuya Tokyo s water reclamation project and the carbonization plant are reasons for help if a city the size of Tokyo can reduce its ecological footprint and clean up its sewage perhaps other cities can do the same Tokyo is working hard to become the world's most eco-friendly mega city not only with new technologies but with smart people willing to make a difference take the mountain I or the don't waste movement which is bringing back some centuries old recycling traditions like the furoshiki gift wrapping cloth which was once widely used in traditional Japan and is now making a comeback the mo tonight campaign uses their new store to promote their message Moton I was founded by a Tokyo journalist want you are mine Shimbun channel yes inspired by Nobel Prize winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai mr. Sanada created an organization to promote green initiatives one person at a time [Music] the power of one person is small but if we consider 120 million Japanese and 7 billion people around the world we want to bring together a base of many people with similar values using reusable shopping bags using doggie bags and carrying their own chopsticks I see why would you cook a meal China is the world's biggest producer of disposable chopsticks making more than 45 billion pairs a year that's equivalent to about 25 million trees and most of the chopsticks go to Japan vladov aqui union my imported chopsticks we are contributing to the loss of the forests those chopsticks come from so let's control their use our sounds body back you when you go to a restaurant try to avoid using disposable chopsticks as much as possible by using your own it'll take a lot of recycled chopsticks to save trees and forests but now Japan's best architects and engineers are helping Tokyo's residents to grow new trees and forests and to transform the garbage islands of Tokyo Bay [Music] - Tokyo Tokyo Kyoko a note on toaster my sector Thomas in 2007 Tokyo city planners asked world-famous Japanese architect Tadao Ando to help turn a garbage island in Tokyo Bay into a green oasis called sea Forest Island Tsukuba moto moto Tokyo has very little green space with the high population density we want more green but there are a few possibilities for us to create it manage it or touch it describe the balloon so far tens of thousands of trees have been planted and a quarter million more are in the works Kuno devotees an idiotic thang with a large number of these small trees have been planted by ordinary citizens of Tokyo all kinds of people come and we all plant trees together [Music] eventually eighty-eight hectares of garbage land will be covered with trees and grass that's the color product law sang-jun Anka guilty in 30 years from now these trees will have grown and this will be a splendid forest 30 years is one generation a time for a child to become an adult so our plan is to grow this forest not for us but for our children and grandchildren for sikita and his co planners see forest island is a huge success but it also has a message Devon look you'll go out the first lesson is not to produce so much garbage this place should be a warning we should say stop making mountains of waste like this these days we try to avoid making such garbage mountains by recycling reusing and burning combustibles and using the ashes [Music] [Applause] [Music] Tokyo's visionaries and builders aren't just trying to save the world one chopstick at a time they're proving that even the worst ecological problems if met head-on with the right resources commitment and courage can be solved and that gives hope to every city save the world don't throw the garbage [Music]

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Views: 1,466,489

Rating: 4.7855973 out of 5

Keywords: Trashopolis full documentaries, Trashopolis documentary, Trashopolis earth documentary, Trashopolis Tokyo, Trashopolis The Eternal City, Trashopolis Tokyo Japan, Trashopolis Japan, Trashopolis, Trashopolis Documentary, Trashopolis Full Episode, Trashopolis Season 2, Trashopolis Tokyo Documentary, Trashopolis Tokyo History, Trashopolis Tokyo Trash Documentary, Trashopolis Clean Tokyo, Trash Documentary, Trashopolis Getting Rid of Trash, Trashopolis Japanese Culture

Id: po49Zsqct_c

Length: 45min 40sec (2740 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018