Report urges industry, schools, households to curb energy use for Kyoto

TOKYO (AP) - Japan is calling on schools, companies and households to curb energy use, reduce trash and recycle to help lower greenhouse gas emissions under a global climate change treaty, a government report said Friday. Tokyo, one of the biggest boosters of the Kyoto protocol, has pledged a six per cent cut in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which are present in nature and trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists believe global warming is chiefly caused by an increase in such emissions from car exhaust pipes, office buildings and factory smokestacks.

The Environment Ministry's 2005 white paper, approved by the Cabinet on Friday, marked an effort to raise awareness of the obstacles the country faces in reaching its emissions-reductions target.

The report sought to enlist ordinary Japanese to help "reduce, reuse and recycle" waste, and called for tighter surveillance of illegal waste disposal and improvements to waste-processing technology.

According to government statistics, pollutants from trash disposal plants have surged as much as 25 per cent since the oil price spikes of the 1970s, despite new laws that have lifted the percentage of trash recycled to nearly 16 per cent. Also, carbon dioxide and other emissions from homes have risen 30 per cent since 1990, the report said.

The protocol, which went into effect in February, commits 55 industrialized countries to make significant cuts in emissions of gases like carbon dioxide by 2012, compared with 1990 levels.

Japan said its greenhouse gas emissions rose 8.3 per cent in 2003 from 1990 levels, and has been struggling to find ways to reverse the trend.

Tokyo is now considering tax incentives to encourage wider use of renewable energy and energy-saving technologies, laws to lessen transport pollution by shifting deliveries from land routes to sea and an emissions trading system that would let companies buy and sell the rights to pollute.

The government also plans to buy the right to pollute from Japanese companies and other countries as part of its strategy.

© The Canadian Press, 2005