Research on Eco-Towns in Japan - UNEP

3. Case study1: Kawasaki Eco-Town
(2) Subsidies for Business Sector
The national government subsidized 99 percent of the hardware project costs, and
Kawasaki City subsidizes one percent of it at Kawasaki Eco-Town. The former has
subsidized JPL12.5 billion and the latter JPL 103 million so far. (see Table.3-1)
(3) Provision of Treatment Water from the Sewage Center in Kawasaki
Kawasaki City provides advanced treatment sewage water for the facilities that recycle
hard-to-recycle waste paper through exclusive pipelines.
The city had a plan to recycle paper discharged from the metropolitan area, as a core
business of the Zero Emission Industrial Park. However, it was concerned that the cost
competitiveness of Kawasaki Eco-Town would be markedly lowered if they used industrial
water at the Eco-Town since paper manufacturing demands a huge amount of water. The
city provided advanced treatment sewage water to solve the problem and support recycling
businesses of hard-to-recycle waste paper.
3-7 Environmental Activities
Kawasaki Eco-Town Project has affected fields outside the business sector as well. Below
is a description of the efforts implemented at schools and citizens’ organizations in
Kawasaki.
(1) Energy Saving Efforts in Local Schools
Schools subcommittees consist of principals, vice-principals and the Parent-Teacher
Associations (PTAs) in Kawasaki. The subcommittee examined and conducted projects on
the conservation of global environment and environmental education at local schools in
order to promote the Action Plan. One of the main characteristics of Kawasaki projects is
this schools subcommittee, which was set up based on the perspective that we can
popularize environmental efforts in the community by starting with efforts in schools.
The main project is to install an energy saving navigation; “An energy saving navigation” is
an instrument to show the amount of electric power consumption at each school and to let
the students and teachers know how much electricity they saved. The Navigation made it
possible to see how much electricity the school has consumed and to compare the rate of
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