ACTTJ - Putting the fear of God into flytippers
Slamming the gates of the gods on dumping of illegal trash
Miniature torii gates like those outside Shinto shrines are being used as an effective counter to illegal trash disposers, according to Cyzo (June).
The little wooden gates standing 1 meter high and 70 centimeters wide are being stuck in areas where people had been throwing away trash illegally and are selling like hotcakes among Japanese municipal governments because they're working so well at scaring wrongdoers away.
Osaka-based New Material reports having sold around 3,000 mini-torii gates since it started offering them in 2003.
"If you're Japanese, you're bound to have some sort of fear of the gods. We started making them because we thought that if you stick a torii gate up in an area where people have been illegally dumping trash, people are going to think twice before throwing anything else away for fear that the gods may punish them and won't dump anything," New Material's president tells Cyzo.
The mini-torii gates cost 5,000 yen apiece and can be installed simply by pushing them into the ground. They are considerably cheaper than the cost of setting up a security camera, and much more cost-effective than sending patrols out to monitor illegal trash dumping spots.
"We've heard from loads of governments that have bought them off us and they all say the illegal dumping has stopped," the president says.
There have been concerns raised that the company and the local governments are taking too much of a commercial advantage of religion with the gates, but New Material insists it has taken steps to make sure not to offend Shinto believers.
"Unlike the real torii gates, the mini-torii's lower bar is longer than the higher bar," the president says. "We've also trademarked the product with a katakana registration instead of kanji."While New Material is delighted their mini-torii have sold so well and been so effective, they don't want things to get too good.
"We've got to promote these things or they won't sell," New Material's president tells Cyzo. "But if we promote them too much, people will realize that they're not really torii and they'll lose their deterrent effect."
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