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Mitsubishi Materials has completed
its waste-processing facilities project at its Naoshima
Smelter & Refinery. The project is part of the
– Eco Island Naoshima ” plan of Kagawa Prefecture
and Naoshima-town, which envisions a revitalization
of the area through the growth of environmental
industries. At Teshima Island,
situated next to Naoshima, unscrupulous business
people illegally dumped 500,000 tons of industrial
waste transported from all over Japan. Kagawa Prefecture
constructed and operates a facility to process the
Teshima waste, on the premises of Naoshima Smelter
& Refinery. The company joined the plan with
the construction of two facilities, which process
waste into raw materials for its copper smelting
and refining processes to realize zero emissions.
The first facility is a melting furnace
for shredder dust, copper bearing sludge and other
metal-bearing substrates from discarded automobiles
and household appliances. The second facility accepts
fly ash produced by the first facility, as well
as from similar melting facilities in the prefecture
and other local agencies both within and outside
of Naoshima Island, and renders a dechloridized
fly ash product that is fully recycled inside the
smelter and refinery. Until recently,
the recycling of materials like shredder dust and
fly ash was impractical, and these materials were
generally placed in landfills. The systems used
at Naoshima recover these materials as reusable
resources and reduce the demand for landfill sites,
contributing over a wide area to the development
of a recycling society. |
