SENDAI -Towards a Disaster-Resilient and Environmentally-Friendly City

Sendai Shiogama Port (March 18, 2011)

Formulated in 2007, the Sendai City Guidelines for Management of Disaster-Generated Waste established the procedure for processing disaster-generated waste for periodic earthquakes that occur in Sendai based on the city’s regional disaster prevention plan.
During the Great East Japan Earthquake, the initial response policy was decided based on these guidelines, and we were able to maintain safe living conditions for citizens through the collection of human waste from designated evacuation centers immediately after the disaster occurred, whereas household waste and human waste collection began 5 days after the disaster.

As the processing of disaster-generated waste and other materials had already been decided in the guidelines, we were also able to accurately estimate the amount of the waste generated and build public private partnership systems to process it. This allowed the large amount of disaster-generated waste, around 4 years’ worth of regular waste, to be processed quicker than planned.
The guidelines were completely revised in FY 2013 to make the content more practical and accurate based on our experience, and reflect the actual damage and status of work during the Great East Japan Earthquake.

With consideration for law amendments, in order to establish a proper, efficient, and rapid system for processing disaster waste and other materials, we reviewed the guidelines with the aim of sustainable measures, ranging from daily disaster preparedness to countermeasures in the event of a large-scale disaster. This was formulated as the “Sendai City Plan for the Processing of Disaster Waste” in 2020.

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