Illegal Garbage Dumping in Japan

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    The operator of a pet funeral business in Saitama prefecture has been arrested for illegally dumping the bodies of dead pets along a deserted mountain road:

    According to nearby residents and former clients, Abe started his pet funeral service about 10 years ago. A pet funeral, which takes about 10 minutes, costs about 30,000 yen, they said. An advertisement in a telephone book said Abe’s company provides a range of services from storing the carcass to entombment. The advertisement also said a cremation costs upward of 5,000 yen, and that the company has a crematory.

    The police were tipped off in early March that many dead dogs and cats had been dumped. They collected about 100 dead animals and about 660 kilograms of bones and other body parts on March 26 and March 31. Investigators identified the owner of one animal after an address was found on a piece of cloth. The police then learned that the owner had asked Abe to perform the funeral for the pet.

    A security camera installed by the Hanno municipal government near the site caught a man resembling Abe throwing away garbage bags. The police have been analyzing the footage.

    A majority of the animals were purebreds, such as Maltese and Siberian Huskies. Some of the pets were wearing ribbons and clothes.

    Some hunters have reported that they had found dead cats and dogs in the area over “the past five or six years,” with garbage bags turning up “almost every week” during some periods, according to the police.

    As you can see from the above news clip, the road is pretty much empty because most drivers prefer the tunnel that was built to replace it. Because of its lack of traffic, people have used it as a place to take garbage and dump it illegally instead of paying required disposal fees. Despite the fact that many “dumping prohibited” signs and a surveillance camera have been placed along the road, the reporter finds some recently abandoned garbage and a few bones that may have belonged to pets.

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