Diplomats from the embassies of 28 countries, including the ambassadors of Fiji and Malawi, gathered Tuesday for an annual seminar sponsored by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and listened to a briefing on the government's recycling policies.
They also participated in a guided tour around a gigantic Tokyo Bay waste landfill site. The government held the seminar to explain its most important policy of the year to diplomats, representatives of local governments overseas and medical companies. Fifty people attended the seminar this year, including 31 from Tokyo embassies.
The participants in the seminar, traveling in two buses, reviewed the Central Breakwater Landfill Site, where all garbage except for industrial waste from Tokyo's 23 wards is eventually dumped after being processed. In recent years, the government has been disposing of about 4 million tons of waste from the 23 wards each year at a cost of about 320 billion yen, accounting for 4.7 percent of the government's general account budget.