Walking through the city of Tokyo, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any trash cans on the streets. I could walk around all day and only find one, maybe two garbage cans. With this kind of configuration, you would think that there would be litter everywhere.
You would think that people would throw their gum wrappers every which place and random pieces of newspaper would flutter in the wind like tumbleweeds. This is not the case. Tokyo is substantially cleaner than most streets in Vancouver and definately cleaner than some other larger cities like Los Angeles and New York. No garbage cans, yet no garbage. How can this be?
It comes down to personal responsibility. If you have garbageto throw away, you throw it away in your own trash can(at home). You do not rely on public facilities and the garbage cansof others to get rid of all of your rubbish.
Your garbage is your problem and no one else’s. Interestingly, you will find recycle binsfor aluminum cansand plastic bottles. These are typically placed next to vending machines.
The lesson that I am talking about is personal responsibility. The concept of personal responsibility permeates every aspect of Japanese culture, as far as I can tell, and it represents a certain mindset that could seriously improve the quality of life and the nature of our society.
