Tokushima · Katsuura ValleyNo.631★★Open in map →
Kamikatsu Zero Waste Center
The building a town put up after it stopped collecting rubbish. A reuse shop, a laboratory and a small hotel share the roof with the sorting counter, and anyone can walk in and watch the system working.
- FromTokushima Station
- ~2 hrRoute bus, then town bus
- Get off atZero Waste Center bus stop (Kamikatsu Town Bus)
- On foot
- Kamikatsu Zero Waste Center
The sweet spot
This is not a hidden place. It has been written up in the foreign press for years and study groups arrive by the coachload. What gets missed is that it is not a display. The counter is in use while you are standing there, and the question the building's shape is asking is aimed at the visitor as squarely as at the town.
Where it is
13 more notes in Tokushima · open the map →What to look for — in walking order
- The cedar and salvage facadean elevation raised from local cedar combined with materials taken out of other buildings
- The sorting stationbays labelled by material, where residents hand each item across in person
- Kuru Kuru Shopa reuse shop stocked entirely with things townspeople have left behind
- Learning centre and hallrooms used for study visits, workshops and town gatherings
- HOTEL WHYthe lodging wing, where guests end up sorting their own waste too
How to actually get there
- Tokushima Station → Yokose-nishi (Tokushima Bus, Katsuura Line, about 75 min).
- Yokose-nishi → Zero Waste Center (Kamikatsu Town Bus for Yaeji-kami, about 30 min).
- The stop is at the entrance — walk straight in.
- Route bus from Tokushima, then the town bus
- Tokushima Station →(Tokushima Bus, Katsuura Line, about 75 min)→ Yokose-nishi. Change there to the Kamikatsu Town Bus bound for Yaeji-kami, which reaches the Zero Waste Center stop in about 30 min. Both legs run only a few times a day, so it is the connection rather than the distance that shapes the plan.
- Back down the valley
- The same two buses run in reverse, and the town timetable is printed with the Tokushima Bus connections alongside it. The last useful departure is early by city standards, so photograph the return column when you change at Yokose-nishi. If you miss it, the town's booked volunteer taxi is the only fallback.
About the place
There is no bin lorry in Kamikatsu. Residents wash and dry their own waste, carry it down to a single sorting hall at the bottom of the valley, and hand it over at a counter where staff check it item by item. More than 80 percent of what arrives is recycled rather than burned or buried. The hall is only one end of a long building; a reuse shop, a laboratory, a meeting hall and a small hotel share the same roof, and visitors walk the same floor as the people dropping things off. Seen from the air, the whole building bends into a question mark.
How to enjoy it
The centre runs 9:00 to 17:00. Buses up the valley are few, so build the day backwards from the return departure rather than forwards from the arrival. If the counter is busy when you walk in, stand off to one side and watch for a while first — that is the part of the building that is actually working.
Background & history
In 2003 the town council issued a Zero Waste declaration, the first of its kind in Japan, committing Kamikatsu to sending nothing to incinerator or landfill. Sorting categories were added one at a time, as a buyer was found for each material, and the scheme has been reorganised more than once since. That is why the headline number keeps moving: the town's own pages do not always agree on how many categories are current. In 2020 the sorting operation moved into this building, designed from the start to be looked at as well as used.
Before you go
- Cash
- Town bus fares are flat regardless of distance: 200 yen for a ride within Kamikatsu, 400 yen for anything that crosses to Yokose-nishi or beyond. Carry coins for it. Purchases inside the centre and a room in the hotel are charged separately.
- Before you go
- Closed on the first Tuesday of each month and from 31 December to 2 January. The prefectural road up the valley is narrow, and in snow or heavy rain it is the bus rather than the building that fails first, so check the service is running before committing to the day.
- Another way
- By car, turn off National Route 55 at the Katsuura River bridge onto Prefectural Route 16, about an hour from Tokushima. Kamikatsu also runs a paid volunteer taxi service, booked ahead, which is what most car-less visitors fall back on when the bus times do not fit.
- After you get off
- The bus stop carries the centre's own name and sits at the entrance, so there is no walk from it at all. Car parking is on the same side of the road.