Remember that book, "100 Simple Things You Can Do To Save The Earth?" Here is the 101st: Head out to Kurohime in Nagano Prefecture. At the foot of Mount Kurohime you'll find Shinano Brewery. Walk into the woody Chestnuts Pub, order one of their English-style beers and you'll be partaking in a unique recycling effort based on a concept called "zero emissions."
Zero emissions involves industries recycling all their wastes into material and energy for new production, and Hideyo Sekiguchi and his daughter, Megumi, Shinano's owner and managing director respectively, are turning Shinano into Japan's first zero emissions brewery.
Hideyo points out that although in old Japan nothing usable was thrown away, today the economy is based on waste.