Committee Created to Promote Use of Sewage Sludge

As one of its measures to deal with global warming, the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport set up a committee to consider the use of sewage sludge as an energy resource. The committee held its first meeting on March 14, 2006.

The committee, named the "Passage of Resources Committee," was established based on a policy set out by the ministry in September 2005, Sewerage Vision 2100. This policy proposed various measures for actively recovering and supplying resources and other functions from sewerage systems and for helping sewerage facilities achieve energy self-sufficiency, thus contributing to the prevention of global warming. The ministry calls this set of measures "Passage of Resources."

The basic elements of this policy are: 1) to increase energy supply self-sufficiency ratios at sewerage facilities; 2) to provide new resources to local communities by putting to use accumulated sewage sludge and unused space, etc. at sewerage facility sites; and 3) to contribute to environmental conservation including curbing global warming by utilizing new sources of energy and resources.

The ministry hopes the committee will publish its final report within fiscal 2006 in time for the next phase of its Focused Planning of Social Infrastructure Improvement policy process, which starts from fiscal 2008.


http://www.niph.go.jp/soshiki/suido/pdf/h19JPUS/abstract/r02.pdf
http://www.mlit.go.jp/english/2006/d_c_and_r_develop_bureau/02_surprise/12_18_p17_vision2100.html

Posted: 2006/06/15 03:33:40 PM
Japanese version