IT WAS not that long ago that life in Kamikatsu revolved around the state of the rice crop and the number of tourists arriving to soak in the restorative waters of the local hot spring. Now the tiny village, in the densely wooded mountains of Shikoku island in south-west Japan, has a new obsession: rubbish.

Since 2003 Kamikatsu’s 2,000 residents have been part of a so far unheralded ecological experiment that, if successful, could force bin men across the country to look for new jobs.

Urban Japanese householders, who balk at having to divide rubbish into flammable and inflammable items, bottles and cans, should spare a thought for their counterparts in Kamikatsu.

Here, household waste must be separated into no fewer than 34 categories before being taken to a recycling centre where volunteers administer firm, but polite, reprimands to anyone who forgets to remove the lid from a plastic bottle or rinse out an empty beer can.

At stake is Kamikatsu’s quest to end its dependence on incineration and landfill by 2020 and claim the title of Japan’s first zero waste community .

An hour’s drive from the nearest city and 590 km from Tokyo, the village was forced to change the way it managed its waste in 2000, when strict new regulations on dioxin emissions forced it to shut down its two incinerators.

“We were no longer able to burn our rubbish, so we thought the best policy was not to produce any in the first place,” said Sonoe Fujii of the vil lage’s Zero Waste Academy, a nonprofit organisation that oversees the scheme.

Despite initial opposition, the zero waste declaration, passed by the village assembly in 2003, has spawned an unlikely army of ecowarriors.

When Kikue Nii is not tending her allotment or catching fish from the river at the bottom of her garden, she is up to her elbows in garbage. “At first it was very hard work,” said the 65year-old, as she emptied another bowl of vegetable peelings into the electric garbage disposal unit next to her back door. “It took ages to sort everything into different types. But it comes naturally now.” That Nii and her neighbours struggled in the early days of the zero waste campaign is understandable, given the daunting myriad of rules.

Glass bottles must be relieved of their caps and sorted by colour. Plastic bottles for soy sauce and cooking oil must be kept separate from Pet (polyethylene teraphthalate) bottles that once contained mineral water and green tea. Newspapers and magazines have to be piled into neat bundles tied with a twine made from recycled milk cartons.

Any waste that is not composted is taken to the village’s zero waste centre.

Anything in good enough condition to be reused ends up at the Kuru Kuru recycling store, where residents are free to drop off or take home free of charge whatever they like, mostly clothes, crockery and ornaments.

“We still have opponents, particularly because almost everything has to be washed,” Fujii said.

“All we can do is talk to the doubters and explain why what they’re doing is so important. I think consciousness is growing that this is a good thing; that it’s not just the right thing to do, but the only thing to do.”