Guidebook of how to put out garbage (photo added; scroll down)

The following is quoted entirely from the English section of a little pamphlet helpfully provided to us by the Numazu City Office.

All families in Numazu City are now requested to separate their garbage and trash into four categories in order to reduce volume and improve the efficiency of recycling.

Basic Rules of Disposal
1. Date for disposal... Confirm the respective dates for disposal in The Annual Collection Schedule for Trash and Garbage then put out garbage and trash by 8:00 am.
2. Place for disposal... Be sure to set out garbage and trash at the station designated for your area.
3. Type of garbage to be separated... Be sure the type of garbage or trash in this table is designated for that day.

The Annual Collection Schedule for Trash and Garbage is available any time at the Information Desk of the Numazu City Office. A collection station for your area is designated by your area. A neighbour can tell you its location of each different categories.

All garbage and trash shall be put into bags designated by the city. Please Do Not Use bags approved by the city for items like recyclable garbage and also other garbage (destined for landfill garbage) which are only burnable. Convenience stores and other shops use the city designated bag for your shopping, so you can use them for disposal.

Disposal of garbage or trash in a river or canal, on the roadsides, in landfills, or an open area, etc. and such offense shall be punishable under city law.

Burnable garbage
Days for Collection: 2 days in a week
Place: Designated collection station for Burnable Garbage
How to: Using Numazu approved city bag.
* Kitchen garbage
* Paper
Paper, carbon paper, wrapping paper, etc.
* Baby diapers, Sanitary napkins
Soiled diapers shall be rinsed and excrement shall be disposed into toilet before disposal.
* Other burnables
Cloth gloves, wooden chopsticks, cigarette butts and ashes.
* Items of personal hygiene
Toothbrushes, toilet cleaners, old clothing (socks, underwear, etc.)

Plastic containers, packing
Days for collection: 1 day in a week
Place: Designated collection station for Plastic containers and Packing.
How to: Using Numazu approved city bag.
* Cases and wrapping made of vinyl or plastic, if they are unclean, should be cleaned first then, can be recycled. But the other ones with the dirty are to be set out with burnable trash.
* Bottles, cups, etc.
* Plastic bags, wraps
* Styrofoam materials: cups, shock-absorbent packing materials, etc.
* Plastic netting, etc.

Recyclable Garbage
Days for Collection: 1 day in a month
Place: Designated collection station for Recyclable Garbage
How to: In each category set out as they are or bundled
* Cans
Empty and place into a collection bag.
* Electrical cords, cigarette lighters, etc. also to be placed as above.
* Glass Bottles (Only bottles that have contained food or beverages)
Empty them first and clean. Transparent bottles, such as clear bottles and coloured bottles shall be separated and placed.
* Metal items
These include metal items and items mostly composed of metal. Items that are partially metal should be considered metal items.
* Dry batteries
These must be put into the collection can.
* Used paper
These items shall be divided into four categories: 1) Newspapers and leaflets, 2) Cardboard, 3) Beverage cartons, 4) Magazines and cardboard. Each group shall be bundled with white paper string. However, carbon paper, thermal paper, silver wrapping paper must be put with Burnable Garbage. Beverage cartons should not put out on a rainy day.
* Clothing
Theses items shall be bundled with string. Soiled clothing shall be put out with burnable items. Clothing items shall not be put out on a rainy day.
* PET bottle
These items include all beverage containers (soft drinks, sake, shoyu.) marked as "PET" containers or labels shall be put into a collection bag set by the city. How to prepare PET bottles for disposal: Remove cap and label. Rinse the bottle with water. Step on the bottle to flatten it. Place the bottle into a collection bag. The removed caps and labels (or items without caps and labels) shall be put out on the day of the plastic containers, packing.

Other Garbage (Destined for Landfill Garbage)
Days for collection: 1 day in a month
Place: The collection station designated for Other Garbage.
How to: Refer to the applicable Category below for directions about how to prepare such items for disposal.
Ceramics, glass. (Category 1): Place items in a city approved bag. This category include items that cannot be incinerated such as items covered with aluminium foil, rubber goods, disposable pocket warmers, etc.
Burnable Large Garbage. (Category 2): Do not place such items in a bag. If the item is large, it should be broken into smaller pieces for incineration. The pieces should be shorter than 1 meter. Mattresses, blankets, and carpets should be bundled with string.
Thermal recycling Plastic Garbage (Category 3): Please place such an item in a city approved bag and mark the bag with a 3. The goods made from plastic or made of leather and small electrical appliances covered with plastic cannot be put into a bag and can placed out as they are.
Fluorescent lights. DO NOT BREAK. If the fluorescent light is already broken, it shall be set out with Category 1 Items above (ceramics, glass).

Got that?

I'll spare you the rest, which is "garbage that cannot be collected by the city" -- what we'd call hard rubbish -- and "information".

Oh, and apparently one of the most common complaints amongst Japanese people about gaijin living in Japan is that they're useless at putting out the garbage.

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Addendum

At the bottom left of the photo are all the crates for glass bottles. You have to separate your bottles into clear, brown and coloured, and put them in the appropriate crate. At the bottom right, along the diagonal section of the fence, are all the bundles of flattened, tied-with-city-approved-white-paper-string cardboard. (If you look really carefully, you can see a shoebox on the top of the pile, behind the spare tyre of the 4WD. That's my shoebox!) On the right about halfway up the photo is the giant blue skip for paper products, and directly above that are all the crates for aluminium and steel cans. And opposite the crates for metal, lining up along the fence, are all the crates for PET bottles. I didn't crush mine, although I saw people down there who were. But I noticed lots of uncrushed bottle in those crates and thought "Gah, forget it."

Tomorrow is Recyclable Garbage Day, and everyone's preparing for it by putting their stuff out this evening. It's a remarkable event, as I suppose it should be given it only happens once a month. There's a man down there who seems to be a self-appointed waste disposal manager. I was rather scared he would berate me publicly for tying my cardboard items together with brown string instead of white (yes, every other bundle I saw down there was tied with white string) so I made an effort not to make eye contact with him as I dumped my boxes. Don't tell him the shoe box was actually full of small cardboard items I hadn't squashed flat. And when I went back down for my second trip, this time with all my paper products stuffed randomly into the largest paper bag I could find, I held it all behind my back and just quickly chucked the bag in the skip while he wasn't looking. Well, I guess I'm not sure what he's really doing down there, as most people seem to know exactly where to put their stuff, so perhaps he's just using the opportunity to chat to the locals. Rubbish obviously has a way of bringing the community together around here. And I did end up asking him where to dump my used orange juice cartons when I made my third trip, and he seemed not to mind that I hadn't a) flattened them, b) tied them together, c) rinsed them thoroughly. Maybe he didn't look all that carefully. Or maybe the Japanese really are as tolerant and forgiving of stupid gaijin as the books say they are, to the gaijin's faces, at least.

I'll probably get better at this as we go along.