Have you ever tried to find a trash can in Tokyo to dispose of a bottle of water you just finished in the boiling summer heat – and couldn’t find one?

You are not alone. Public trash cans are surprisingly rare in Tokyo.

How can that be in a city of 37 million people, the biggest metropolis in the world and likely the cleanest?

In Japan it’s culturally expected that you are responsible for your own trash. And honestly, I have never seen a Japanese person leave trash behind anywhere.

People don’t think ‘someone will clean this up’, they think ‘this reflects on me’.

It’s all about your own behavior. You even see older people walking through city streets collecting tiny bits of litter – sometimes even individual tree leaves.

So, what do people do with trash they produce while on the road?

They carry it with them.

Many people carry small trash bags in their backpacks or handbags collecting food wrappings, coffee cups, tissue and other small items and dispose of them when they get home.

Others eat where the food was bought and throw the trash away there.

A significant reason for the lack of public bins is a serious one, though. After the 1995 sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, many public trash cans were removed for security reasons as they could hide dangerous items.

And Japan has very strict sorting rules for garbage – which drives many foreigners insane. There’s separation between burnables, non-burnables, plastic bottles, other plastic, glass bottles, cardboard and more.

It’s impossible to enforce this level of sorting in public spaces. Fewer public bins mean fewer sorting violations.

While difficult to imagine in most megacities around the world, no trash cans work really well in beautiful Tokyo!

Did you know?

• Walking while eating isn’t very common in Japan. People eat at home, in school, at work or near the place where they bought food, like convenience stores – and they leave the trash there.
• During festivals and major events, cities temporarily install trash and recycling stations. Once the event is over, the bins disappear again.