For those who don't know, Japan is SERIOUS about recycling. Residents needs to properly sort their recycling into MANY different categories (i.e ferric metals, non-ferric metals, glass, PET bottles etc) often need to be treated prior (i.e labels and caps removed from PET bottles and washed) and are put out in specific days. All this means when it arrives at the recycling plant, it arrives all pre-sorted and ready for processing.
From what I've heard, there's a LOT of cost involved with sorting mixed recyclables, and apparently in countries that use mixed recycling, a lot of it just gets burned due to said cost. This is probably why recently, a lot of PET bottles in Japan now have "made from 100% recycle PET" on them. It's not financially-prohibitive to do this, as there's a plentiful source of recycled PET available.
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