Moving onto Japan for a different kind of story... one a little less glamorous. The issue of landfills in Japan. They're filling up... and may be out of space by the year 2030. But now the trash issue is being tackled in a different kind of way.
The average resident of the 12 million-strong Tokyo metropolis generates more than two pounds of waste every day. And Tokyo's garbage officials once felt down in the dumps about where to put it all.

Landfills in the Tokyo Bay have devoured more than 500,000 tons of incombustible waste—mostly plastics—every year for the last few decades.

[Toshio Miyabe, Tokyo Landfill Control Office]:
"The Tokyo Bay is a limited space, and there's a limit to how much we can fill."

Until recently, experts feared the landfills might fill to capacity by 2030, but then Tokyo officials came up with an alternative plan. They decided to start burning plastics—and to do it without producing smoke or odor.

Applying Japan's latest green technology, Toshima Incineration Plant is one of more than a dozen garbage plants in the Tokyo metropolitan area that have recently started burning plastic waste.

The plant's control center closely monitors the levels of toxins at each stage of the burning process.

This incinerator operates at 1600 degrees Fahrenheit, or 900 Centigrade. A state-of-the-art air filter system removes almost every single ash and toxic substance from the air before it leaves the plant. What goes out of the 70-story-tall smoke stack is just steam and a very tiny amount of carbon dioxide.

And the byproducts are all recyclable—even profitable, brining in nearly a million dollars a year.

One of the byproducts, ash, is melted and turned into what's called "slag," a kind of black sand that can be used for asphalt pavements.

Heat and electricity generated by burning garbage are used to heat nearby public facilities, like this neighborhood swimming pool on the garbage plant's top floor.

Local authorities say since Tokyo's garbage plants started burning plastics, the amount of waste that goes to landfills have been reduced by more than half. At this rate, local landfills are expected to be in use for at least 50 years. (less info)