Consortium Develops Integrated Circuit Tag Waste Tracking System

The Japan Research Institute, Ltd. (JRI), a consulting and systems integration company, announced on March 28, 2005 that a Material Tracing Integrated Circuit System (MATICS) Consortium has launched a verification project to trace the flow of industrial waste using integrated circuit (IC) tags, a.k.a. radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The consortium is sponsored by JRI, consists of a total of 37 corporations and organizations, and is developing business models and patents for IC tag-related services such as medical waste tracking and recycling.

Under Japan's manifest system, companies that generate industrial waste are required to use a manifest that records each transaction between generating, treatment and disposal companies. This system is intended to help reduce "waste disposal risk" - the risk of being held liable for improper disposal - but more integrated control of wastes and manifests is still needed to actually reduce this risk. With the MATICS system, waste material and information about it can be managed comprehensively by reading a contactless IC tag attached to the waste.

The verification project for the system is conducting tracking tests in Ibaraki Prefecture and the Tokyo Metropolitan area. At the Ibaraki Brewery of Asahi Breweries, Ltd., an IC tag is attached to each bale of compacted waste plastic collected in the brewery and the accuracy of the trace is tested to determine the operational workload limit. In Tokyo, IC tags are attached to medical waste from major general hospitals to test their readability and to identify possible reductions in disposal costs.

After the verification project is complete, the consortium intends to start providing services on a commercial basis by the end of fiscal 2005.



Posted: 2005/07/30 07:58:48 AM
Japanese version