One Big Obstacle To Japan's Recovery? Trash

[AsahinaKimi]

Last month's earthquake and tsunami have left Japan with a massive trash problem. In many parts of the country's affected coastline, there's literally nothing left but mud and debris.

On the outskirts of the seaside city of Kesennuma, what was once a baseball field and park has been turned into at least two football fields' worth of garbage, piled 15 feet high. Bulldozers are going through it all. There are aluminum siding, school desks, bits of carpet. The stench can be detected from blocks away — it smells a little bit like rotting fish.

This is but a tiny fraction of Japan's tsunami-related debris. The disasters made junkyards of entire cities and created the equivalent of 16 years' worth of waste. More...

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/29/135770675/one-big-obstacle-to-japans-recovery-trash

Three years eyed to remove disaster debris

The Environment Ministry said Saturday it expects that it will take three years for the three prefectures in the Tohoku region worst hit by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami to finish removing the massive amount of debris left by the disaster.
more...
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110501a5.html

[BoWanZi]

1. Maybe if we had a nuclear powered blast furnace, we could just burn it all

(just kidding!)

[msongs]

2. a huge recycling industry there and many jobs to go with it nt

[cdsilv]

3. Prediction - it will all be dumped in the Marianas Trench n/t