The town of Kamikatsu on the Japanese island of Shikoku has become famous for a notable absence: trash. After almost two decades practicing a low-waste economy, some among the town’s roughly 1,500 inhabitants claim that change is possible. Kamikatsu was doing almost no recycling in the 1990s. But a new law on carbon dioxide emissions forced the town’s two incinerators to close and its residents to rethink their approach to waste management. “Kamikatsu is a rural area. People used to burn their household garbage at home or dump it in nature,” Akira Sakano, director of the Zero Waste Academy, told Great Big Story. In 2003, the town created Japan’s first zero-waste declaration and a whole new set of guidelines for taking out the trash. “In the past, I didn’t have to think about whether it was plastic, burnable garbage, or anything. I just burned it in the yard,” housewife Hachie Katayama explained. “Then, …