One Japanese town sorts waste into 40 different categories. How does Australia’s recycling compare?

A worker at a waste centre in Kamikatsu. The Japanese town may be an outlier but households in some countries regularly contend with five to 10 recycling streams. Photograph: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images

There’s no garbage truck in Kamikatsu.

Instead, the Japanese town’s 1,400 residents take their waste to the local recycling centre, or “Gomi station”, and sort it themselves into more than 40 different categories.