Research & reports

台東区 · 台東区 · Japan

Taito Ward partners with Daimaru Matsuzakaya and Local Food Cycling to sell subsidized home compost containers and run collection events for circular food-waste use. Over the one-year period from December 2024 to November 2025, the ward reports about 5.4 tons of food waste reduction and about 2.6 tons of CO2 reduction.

· Wikipedia · Japan

This Wikipedia article on night soil describes how, in the city of Edo, compost merchants gathered feces to sell to farmers, and that human excreta of rich people were sold at higher prices because their better diet presumably left more nutrients in it. Various historic documents detailing toilet-waste disposal procedures date from as early as the 9th century. The article states that after World War II the practice declined rapidly due to sanitation concerns and the spread of chemical fertilizer, and that today less than 1% of human waste is used for night soil fertilization.

ローカルフードサイクリング株式会社 · ローカルフードサイクリング株式会社 · Japan

The official site of LFC Compost, a bag-based home composting product for kitchen scraps operated by Local Food Cycling Inc., part of the Borderless Group. Users simply 'add' food waste and 'lightly mix' it to compost, with support via LINE chat, balcony-gardening classes, and compost consultation/collection events also offered. Its subscription compost-set product has received 1,016 reviews with a 4.51/5 rating.

Ana Catarina Morais, Akira Ishida · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Japan

This research investigated factors encouraging Japanese households to engage in composting, applying the theory of consumption values (TCV) and evaluating hypotheses using ordinal partial least squares structural equation modeling. Findings indicate that household composting in Japan is influenced by social approval, behavior visibility, composting knowledge, convenience, interest in gardening/farming, and individual availability. Factors like emotions, gender, housing type, and household size did not significantly impact composting practice.

環境省 · 環境省 環境再生・資源循環局 廃棄物適正処理推進課 · Japan

Japan's Ministry of the Environment statistical compendium on FY2023 municipal solid waste management. The national waste-flow chart shows total waste generation of 38,974 thousand tonnes and total recycled volume of 7,633 thousand tonnes (recycling rate 19.5%). Of the 6,234 thousand tonnes recycled by municipalities, 119 thousand tonnes (1.9%) went to fertilizer and 6 thousand tonnes (0.1%) to animal feed.

Akiko Iida, Toru Terada, Kazuaki Tsuchiya, Tadashi Yamaguchi, Makoto Yokohari · Urban forestry & urban greening · Japan

Using Tokyo — where urban and agricultural land use have long been intermixed — as a case study, mailed questionnaires and in-person semi-structured interviews with urban farmers examined how community-scale composting of urban-forest green waste is integrated into commercial urban agriculture (2024, Japan). About one-third of professional urban farmers still produced compost, mainly from leaf litter, to improve soil quality, and had adapted to urbanization by sourcing leaf litter beyond their own woodlands from neighboring urban forests within a few kilometers, including parks, schools, and shrines. While urbanization has drastically altered the physical landscape, farmers have carried this intangible composting system forward for hundreds of years by retrofitting it, though the study found farmers are motivated by economic rather than environmental reasons. The authors conclude that decentralized composting works effectively in commercial urban agriculture where waste supply and demand sites are geographically close, and call for further research on scaling up waste recycling through urban agriculture.

農林水産省 · 農林水産省 · Japan

Guidance published by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) in July 2024, anticipating increased use of biodegradable plastic bags for household food-waste collection. It requires that such bags be removed, or sufficiently decomposed so their breakdown products do not inhibit crop growth, at composting and biogas facilities.

Shimpo N. · Urban Agriculture & Regional Food Systems (Wiley), 6:e20015 · Japan

A case study of a suburban-Tokyo community garden that collects neighborhood kitchen waste and returns it to the soil as compost, forming a local food cycle. It documents how the bottom-up founder sustained the garden, provided work opportunities for people with disabilities and food-education for children, and built links with welfare facilities, kindergartens, and schools.

Jiménez-Antillón, J., Calleja-Amador, C., Romero-Esquivel, L. G. · Resources (MDPI), 7(4):84 · Global (Costa Rica; Japan-origin method)

A field study placing the Kitakyushu-origin 'Takakura' composting method—widely diffused in Surabaya, Indonesia—as small portable boxes in university offices and workplaces in Costa Rica. Processing food waste from 45 staff over six months, it shows that low-cost, citizen/workplace-scale fermentation composting is viable.

Naomi Shimpo, Toru Terada, Makoto Yokohari · Journal of The Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture · Japan

This study examines the feasibility of organic material circulation from turning increasing vacant lots in suburban Japan into allotment gardens, comparing three scenarios with different degrees of gardenization. Composting experiments identified the composition of organic materials needed to produce usable compost and the amount of compost required to gardenize vacant lots, while a separate analysis determined how many households would need to cooperate in supplying organic materials under each scenario. The study found that the weight ratio of kitchen waste to pruning waste for usable compost was 3:2, and that cooperation from at least 16 households would be needed to produce enough compost to gardenize an average-sized housing lot. It concludes that the scenario limited to existing gardens on vacant lots is feasible for organic material circulation, while the other two scenarios, which assume more extensive gardenization, would require greater understanding among urbanites.

Hideharu KURITA, Tokuji Yamamoto, Tetsushi Shigeoka · JOURNAL OF RURAL PLANNING ASSOCIATION · Japan

A case study of an allotment garden for kitchen garbage recycling in Kitamoto City, Japan, examines the potential for agricultural land management by user organizations of allotment gardens in peri-urban areas. Analyzing the management system of an allotment garden with a garden user organization, the study finds that such organizations can potentially play a role in managing agricultural land in peri-urban settings, and that garden user organizations and their networks contribute to resolving problems related to urban residents' use of agricultural land.

環境省 · 環境省 · Japan

In the Edo period, human waste and ash were stabilized hygienically in 'koidame' pits and traded to surrounding farms as fertilizer, sustaining a regional circular economy that kept cities clean. After WWII, land reform and the spread of chemical fertilizer left human waste with nowhere to go, prompting a shift from the Sanitation Law (1954) to the Waste Management Law (1970); municipal composting facilities built in the 1960s-70s were largely abandoned due to contamination, odor complaints, and the labor burden on aging farmers.

· 法令（e-Gov法令検索・412AC0000000116） · Japan

The 2000 Food Recycling Act, pushing food businesses to reduce waste and recycle it into feed and fertiliser. Sets per-industry recycling targets and certifies 'recycling loop' plans — the legal frame for running food-scrap composting as a business.