Recycling it saves energy and transportation costs
Adult diapers .. a new source of fuel in "old man" Japan
Aging has become a problem for Japan.
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Hundreds of tons of diapers are discarded daily, and a large part of them are burned.
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The natural waters that flow into public baths in Hoki, near Japan's west coast, originate from underground hot springs.
On the surface, before the water comes out, it is heated to 41.6 degrees Celsius, the ideal temperature for tired muscles.
But it is not known to most bathers that the furnace that heats the water runs on fuel of unclean origin: recycled pellets from soiled adult diapers.
In rapidly aging Japan, older people with incontinence use more diapers than children.
With ever-increasing mountains of this type of waste, the town of Hockey has become a leader in national efforts to reduce it.
By recycling nappies, which represent about a tenth of the city's waste, it has taken advantage of waste that would otherwise have been dumped in incinerators, adding emissions to the atmosphere.
With many other countries facing a similar demographic collapse, adult diaper waste poses an invisible looming challenge along with labor shortages in nursing homes and underfunded pension systems.
"When we think about it, we find that it is a difficult and big problem," says Kosuke Kawai, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Studies. "Japan and other developed countries will face similar problems in the future."
in the town of Hoki, with a population of just over 10,500 people, in Tottori Prefecture;
Officials were concerned about the rapidly growing diaper waste, and considered the costs of developing an old incinerator.
They decided to convert one of two township incinerators into a diaper recycling plant and produce the fuel, which would help reduce the costs of natural gas heating, in the public spa.
fuel source
In the spa, there is nothing to announce about the source of the heating fuel.
Satomi Shirahise, 45, who was visiting with her husband from Kyoto, was not alarmed when she learned about the source of the heat.
In her locker room, she said, after hiking up nearby Mt. Daisen, much like the more famous Mt. Fuji;
"The recycling effort seems very good to me," he continued, "I'm not averse to it, it was good water."
The diapering challenge is particularly great in Japan, where more than 80% of the country's waste goes to incinerators - higher than any other rich country - despite the obsession with sorting.
While most other sources of waste are decreasing in size with the shrinking population in Japan, the waste of the elderly increases by thousands of tons, daily.
The amount of adult diapers turned into waste in Japan has increased by about 13%, to about 1.5 million tons annually, in the past five years, according to data from the Ministry of the Environment.
This waste is expected to grow by another 23 percent, by 2030, when those 65 years of age or older will represent nearly a third of the population.
Because diapers contain a lot of cotton pulp and plastic, and swell to four times their original weight after being soiled, they require much more fuel to burn than other sources.
This leads to costly waste management bills for local authorities, and significant amounts of harmful carbon emissions.
A growing problem
And unlike other products, such as single-use plastics, diaper use cannot be restricted without compromising sanitation and healthcare.
Health authorities stress that the use of diapers cannot be stopped.
Recognizing the growing problem, Japan's Environment Ministry set up a working group, last year, to discuss alternatives to diaper burning.
A few other municipalities follow hockey and turn diapers into fuel pellets, while some try to turn them into a material that can be mixed with cement, for construction or paving roads.
Unicharm, one of the country's largest diaper manufacturers, has built a pilot plant in Kagoshima, southern Japan, where it recycles nappies, once again, for production.
One of the biggest challenges to recycling is separating soiled nappies from all other waste by caregivers.
In this, Hayato Ishii, an official at the Environment Ministry's Recycling Promotion Division, says that less than 10 percent of municipalities require families to separate diapers from public garbage.
In Hooke, families don't sort diapers;
But in six nursing homes, helpers dispose of the diapers in special bags to prevent odors, and they are taken to the recycling plant every day of the week.
At Dyson Rehabilitation Hospital, where eight out of every 200 patients need disposable diapers, patients produce about 180 kilograms of this waste every day.
day tours
One afternoon, finally, Tatsushi Sakata, 33, a worker at the area's diaper recycling plant, collected 35 large bags, each containing 30 nappies, all used within the past 24 hours, from the storage space behind the facility. and dumped it in a truck to take it to another location.
Sakata usually collects nearly a ton of bags on his daily rounds.
At the recycling plant, he and his colleagues, in suits, rubber boots and helmets, unload diapers into a container the size of a small trailer.
They are sterilized for 24 hours at 350 degrees, reducing their volume to a third of their weight while they are dirty.
This process turns diapers into fluff, which is processed by another machine and turned into two-inch gray pellets.
Record numbers
According to the Ministry of the Interior, the estimated number of people aged 65 or over in Japan reached a record high, reaching 36.4 million, an increase of 220,000 from 2020. The proportion of the elderly in the total population of the country rose to a record level of 29.1% , which is the highest number among 201 countries and regions worldwide.
In Japan, the proportion of elderly people has increased since 1950, and this number is expected to rise to 35.3% in 2040, when the so-called second generation of baby boomers, or people born in the early seventies, will reach the age of 65 years or more. More, according to the National Institute for Population and Social Security Research.
garbage control
“At first, I thought it was a little scary, because we were dealing with waste,” says Tatsushi Sakata, who has worked for 10 years in a factory. “Our goal is to turn uncontrollable garbage into something manageable.”
Hockey Mayor Tamotsu Moriyasu said there was no money to be made in the recycling process, which saved fuel costs at the incineration plant and lowered transportation costs.
In the public bath, a worker dumps the pellets into a large funnel connected by wide plastic tubes to a biomass furnace.
The pellets are burned to generate the intense heat needed to heat the shower water.
Although the process produces carbon emissions, the pellets are less polluting than coal or the petroleum gas previously used in boilers, according to government officials.
"When I first heard about it, I thought about it," said Tatsuya Sakagami, 68, a retired city official who sometimes uses the bathrooms. "But adult diapers are just items people use."
• 36.4 million people aged 65 or over in Japan.
• The diapering challenge is particularly great in Japan, where, despite the obsession with sorting, more than 80% of the country's waste goes to incinerators.
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