A site visit on the fifth day of the First 2009 Workshop was to Ogo Environment Center, which incorporates one of Kobe’s two main landfill sites. Landscaped into the mountains north of the city, the center is at an altitude of 280-480m, covers 138 hectares (including the 35.5 ha landfill), and has capacity for 7.7 million cubic meters of waste. 

An official explains the layout of the Ogo Environment Center

The center took 6 years to build, going into service in October 1990, and operates at a cost of 10.5 billion yen per year, which includes the cost of land procurement). It receives waste collected by the city government from the central and northern parts of the city which citizens classify as non-burnable, as well as serving as a relay center for recyclable waste. From the waste, recyclable items, such as bicycles and large furniture are sorted to be sent to the Recycle Craft Center for maintenance, and the other non-burnable and street gutter waste are landfilled. Cans, bottles, PET bottles, already separated by citizens, are also received and taken to the Resources Recycle Center, and gas / spray canisters are separated from other non-recyclable and large waste, which is taken to one of three garbage shredding plants. 

In 2008, the amount of non-burnable and large waste brought to the center was 4,000 tons. From this amount, 2,951 tons was relayed to recycle centers. Over twenty years, Ogo has accepted approximately 1.57 million tons (1.81 million cubic meters), which included the huge amount of wreckage caused by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 (approx. 1.12 million tons). The landfill is still only 19.9% full, and ongoing citizen measures to reduce their waste means the center should be operational for decades to come.

The landfill and leachate treatment pool / flood control dam of Ogo Environment Center