The residents of Kamikatsu, a town of 1,700, sort their trash into 34 different categories. It may seem like an overkill, but the small Japanese town, with a population of just over 1,700, is on a mission to become the country’s first ‘zero-waste’ community by 2020. And, they’re almost there. Kamikatsu already recycles about 80 percent of its trash, with the last 20 percent going into a landfill. That progress is 12 years in the making. In 2003, Kamikatsu declared its zero-waste ambition after the town gave up the practice of dumping trash into an open fire for fear of endangering both the environment and the population.
