Will Japan sink beneath a pile of electronic waste?

As the county that has done so much to flood the planet with electronic gadgets, you'd hope that the Japan is also worrying about what to do with all that rubbish after it gives way, usually after a couple of weeks, to the next generation of stuff. Britain's waste watchers hope so too which is why they sent a group to Japan on a Global Watch Mission, supported by the Department of Trade and Industry. 

The mission has just come up with its report: "Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE): innovating novel recovery and recycling technologies in Japan".

The messages sometimes smack of the blindingly obvious. For example, one idea is to "Complete a study of the ‘state of the art’ in electronics recycling in the UK to map against emerging opportunities". But that is no criticism. If countries haven't done that sort of thing already, then they need a good smacking. We suppose that environmentalists are too busy chasing whales and picketing nuclear power stations to worry about something as mundane as the fate of their own computers.

Perhaps more interesting to the R&D community, and those wanting to make money out of it, is the idea that "The government should consider setting up a national WEEE recycling R&D facility or ‘centre of excellence’".

The mission, a mixture of academics, waste specialists and electronics people, also put the boot in with another increasingly common suggestion, that the DTI doesn't make its excuses and leave the scene too early. "Government support should not stop with R&D but should continue down through product development and field trials to  market, with a suitable emphasis on ‘new product’ manufacturing development."