Communicating with local residents on The Guideline for Municipal Solid Waste Treatment Systems in Japan

The Guideline for Municipal Solid Waste Treatment Systems (hereafter referred to as The Guideline ) established by Japanʼs Ministry of Environment, is, among other things, an aid that can be used by local governments to better communicate with their residents. We examined the effect of providing information based on The Guideline using a citizenʼs evaluation of their local municipal solid waste treatment services : a questionnaire was conducted in four target cities and participants were then divided into two groups. One group was shown diagrams showing the status of waste generation and its treatment in their city based on suggestions noted in The Guideline , while the other group was not provided with any sort of supplemental information. Appending appropriate interpretations to the diagrams was found to be important because information prepared based on the Guideline tended to lower the respondentsʼ evaluations of municipal solid waste treatment. We suggest that when citizens have a basic familiarity with the local waste management administration and rely upon it, even negative information does not affect their evaluations. With this in mind, we strongly encourage prioritizing the building up of close relationships based on mutual trust between citizens and local government, using The Guideline as a tool for such communication.