With the Home Appliances Recycling Law coming into effect April 1, Japan is taking a significant step in changing its waste disposal policy from burying discarded appliances to recycling as much as possible.

A banner, offering to dispose of old appliances for free, hangs above lines of new washing machines at a Laox store in Tokyo's Akihabara district.

The law, which will be taking effect nearly two years after its enactment, is aimed at building a sustainable society through a more efficient use of resources.

Local governments have until now played a major role in waste disposal, leaving manufacturers, retailers and consumers indifferent to what happens to appliances once they leave their hands.

Disposed appliances are currently destined for landfill. But the new law will force these three groups to take greater responsibility for the recycling of four home electric appliances -- televisions, air conditioners, washing machines and refrigerators.

Simply put, manufacturers will be required to recycle reusable parts and materials from disposed appliances, while retailers will be responsible for returning the appliances to makers from consumers.

Retailers will be obliged, at customers' request, to pick up discarded appliances they have sold, as well as old appliances customers are replacing the shop's product with. Local governments will take care of other cases.

Consumers will meanwhile shoulder part of the recycling and transportation costs.

Manufacturers are required to achieve designated per-product recycling rates in terms of weight -- 50 percent for refrigerators and washing machines, 55 percent for TVs and 60 percent for air conditioners. Harmful materials, such as chlorofluorocarbon gas widely used in refrigerators, must also be removed safely.

According to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, 18 million of the appliances covered under the new recycling law were dumped in 1996, or 1.2 percent of the 50 million tons of consumer waste.

Despite this modest ratio, these appliances take up a lot of precious space in dump sites because they are so difficult to burn or crush. Merely 10 percent of the appliances are recycled for metal.

With dump sites expected to be filled up soon, it is imperative that as much material as possible is reused and waste is minimized by optimizing the new recycling system, a ministry official said.

This, however, may be a difficult task to achieve.

One deficiency of the new system is the lack of a mechanism to motivate consumers to obey the law, or discourage them from breaking it, observers say.

The new waste policy regime means a greater financial burden on consumers, who can currently abandon used appliances for free or a small charge, up to 1,900 yen per appliance for central Tokyo residents.

Exactly how big the burden on consumers will be remains uncertain, as the fees they will have to pay for transporting and recycling discarded appliances depend on the retailers, local governments and manufacturers involved.

Major manufacturers have already set identical recycling fees -- 2,700 yen for a TV, 3,500 yen for an air conditioner, 2,400 yen for a washing machine and 4,600 yen for a refrigerator.

But most retailers and local governments have yet to announce their rates.

Nagoya-based major retailer Hoei Kaden K.K. -- one of the few retailers that have set their charges -- will transport an air conditioner for 3,200 yen and a washing machine for 2,000 yen, while TVs can be carried away for 1,800 yen or 3,000 yen and refrigerators for 2,400 yen or 3,700 yen, depending on size. That may be a good deal given observers warn that consumers may end up paying 6,000 yen to 7,000 yen apiece.

In apparent reluctance to shoulder this extra cost, consumers are flocking to buy new products and dumping their old ones before April 1.

According to the Nippon Electric Big-Stores Association, January sales of the four designated appliances increased by 10 percent to 35 percent from the previous year.

Consequently, critics warn of a possible increase in the illegal dumping of home appliances, the opposite effect of what the new law intends.

The law penalizes manufacturers and retailers for refusing, without good reason, to take in discarded items. But unless consumers initiate, manufacturers will not have to recycle their products.

To prevent this result, European nations, including Belgium and the Netherlands, have adopted a system in which recycling fees are part of a product's purchase price, so that consumers only need to return used items for recycling.

Partly due to resistance by manufacturers, Japan opted instead to charge consumers at the time of disposal.

Manufacturers have argued that it would be difficult for them to collect enough money under the European system, predicting a gap in the number of new products sold against those they need to recycle.

They also said higher prices might hamper sales of new products.

Despite what appears to be a system preferable for makers, Atsuko Nomura, an industrial analyst at Sakura Institute of Research, said producers are bound to enter price-cutting competition in recycling fees.

For manufacturers, recycling discarded appliances will initially be a loss-making business, even with consumer fees. Whether they can break even depends on to what extent they can improve the efficiency of their recycling plants by collecting as many items as possible, industry sources said.

To this end, the nation's seven major electronics makers have formed two groups -- one comprising Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and Toshiba Corp., and the other joining Hitachi Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Sanyo Electric Co., Sharp Corp. and Sony Corp.

Matsushita and Toshiba has built two new recycling plants and will use 22 existing plants operated by their commissioned waste dismantling agencies to minimize initial investment.

In contrast, the five-firm alliance built 13 recycling plants to meet most of their recycling needs. The group will also use a plant jointly set up with other electronic makers in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture.

Equipped with the latest technology, the plants set up by the five-firm group will also improve the recycling rate of other home appliances not covered by the law in the future, said Katsuharu Uehara, deputy general manager at Hitachi's consumer products group.

In setting recycling fees for consumers, however, Matsushita and Toshiba have an apparent advantage in their smaller initial investment. Still, all seven major manufacturers set identical rates.

Because Matsushita, Japan's largest home appliance maker, unveiled its recycling fees first, others had no choice but to offer the same rates to maintain market competitiveness, Nomura of Sakura Institute of Research reckoned.

Nomura said appliance manufactures will eventually be pressured to change their conventional strategy for mass production and mass consumption.

"Taking account of recycling costs, some manufactures may reduce the number of product categories," she said.

It is about time for manufacturers to compete in software and services, rather than trying to sell new hardware by changing design and other features, she said.

Indeed, under the new recycling law, manufacturers are obliged to make efforts to develop products that are friendlier to the environment. They have already introduced easier-to-recycle materials and products with simpler designs.

Uehara predicts recycling will be easier in five years because products recently put on the market have been designed to be less harmful to the environment.

"Home appliances that we will receive this year for recycling were probably made a decade ago or earlier, so it's more troublesome for us to recycle those products that were made without recycling being a consideration," he said. "Now we are making more environment-friendly products so that we can improve the recycling ratio per product."

With the new recycling law, retailers will also be facing new competition.

Large retailers especially will use the transporting fees for discarded items as another bargaining tool, said Tomoo Shimizu, a managing director of the retailers association.

"Retailers that set lower fees or give a better discount can attract more consumers, and that may put small shops into further difficulty," he said.