Present State and Prospects of Waste Management Businesses in Japan

Environment-related businesses will keep growing up as promising industry in the future. It is estimated that this businesses will grow about 50 trillion yen businesses according to the Ministry of the Environment in 2010, and it reaches about 60 trillion yen in 2020. However, when environment-related businesses are seen as Non-manufacturing industry, it seems to somewhat unfavorably businesses compare with the manufacturing industry. Moreover, it causes illegal disposal by a malignant companies etc. though the waste management businesses located in the promising industry, the image has been decreasing. Most of the waste management businesses consist of medium-small companies and the small companies, and there are no big companies and famous companies in this market, like the Waste Management Inc., which are sales of 1.4 trillion yen in the United States. In this paper, the current state and the problem of the waste management businesses in Japan were considered based on interview that was held to six waste management companies in Japan. As a result, there are some movement that the big companies are trying to join these businesses from Manufacturing including shipbuilding industry and iron and steel industry. And because of that, existing waste management companies are facing the big revolution of the market. In order to attempt the improvement of the nature of the industry in the future, small and tiny companies will be selected in this market and the affiliations among waste management businesses and education institution will advance near the future.