Gomi Sorting in Japan: Moeru Gomi, Sodai Gomi and the 8am Rule, With a Real Ward's Rules (2026)

Quick answer

Hi, I'm Miya — I help newcomers settle into life in Japan, and gomi is the thing people apologise to their neighbours about in month one. The good news is that it isn't complicated, it's just specific.

Most English explanations tell you Japan splits waste into burnable and non-burnable. That isn't how the ward I'm working from does it at all. So instead of giving you a vague national summary, I've worked through one real ward's official guide end to end — Shinjuku City, October 2025 edition — and marked clearly which parts are universal habits and which change when you move.

The short version: four categories, put it out by 8:00am, and anything that doesn't fit inside a 30cm cube is a different process entirely.

The four categories (it isn't burnable vs non-burnable)

Shinjuku sorts household waste into four streams, and each has its own collection rhythm. Recyclable resources go out once a week. Combustible garbage goes out twice a week. Metal, ceramic and glass go out twice a month. Large-sized waste isn't collected on a schedule at all — you book it and pay for it.

Notice what's missing: there's no bin called "non-burnable". The things you'd instinctively put there — a chipped mug, a frying pan, a broken glass — belong to Metal · Ceramic · Glass, and that stream is only collected twice a month. Miss it and you're living with a bag of broken crockery for two weeks.

That twice-a-month category is the single most common thing I see newcomers get wrong, because nothing about the English phrase "non-burnable" warns you that it's on a fortnightly cycle.

The 8:00am rule

Waste goes to the collection point by 8:00am on the collection day. Not the night before in most cases, and not at 8:30 when you leave for work.

Two details that help: collection still happens on rainy days and on national holidays, with year-end and New Year holidays as the exception. So a public holiday isn't a reason to hold on to your bags — though bad weather can delay or cancel a round, which is worth checking rather than assuming.

Putting a bag out late is what draws a note from your building manager, and the reason is practical rather than social: once the truck has been, the bag sits on the street until the next collection day.

Combustible garbage: more goes in here than you'd think

Kitchen waste is the obvious one, and it's also the bulk of it — raw kitchen waste makes up 35% of all combustible garbage in the ward, which is why draining water off food waste before you bag it genuinely changes what you carry downstairs.

Beyond food: paper that can't be recycled, clothing, disposable diapers and sanitary goods, leather products, rubber products, ice packs, desiccants, small volumes of branches and leaves from garden plants, plastic products that contain non-plastic parts, and PET bottles or plastic items too soiled to be recycled.

There are two size rules in this category that catch people out. Long hoses have to be cut down to 50cm or less. Branches and leaves likewise go in at 50cm or less. Anything longer isn't combustible garbage any more — it's the large-sized process.

Cooking oil doesn't get poured away. You soak it into paper or cloth, or harden it with a coagulant sold in any supermarket, and then it goes in with the combustible waste. The ward also collects used cooking oil separately at its recycling centres.

For the bag itself: a container with a lid of roughly 60L, or a see-through plastic bag. See-through matters — opaque bags are how a collection gets skipped.

Metal, ceramic and glass — and the 危険 label

This stream takes aluminium foil and metal items, ceramics, glass and broken bottles, cutting tools, needles and razor blades, small appliances, fluorescent light bulbs, and products containing mercury.

Here's the rule I most want you to remember, because it protects the person who collects it. Anything broken or sharp — glass, ceramics, blades, needles — gets wrapped in thick paper and marked 危険, which reads kiken and means dangerous. Write those two characters on the outside. It takes five seconds and it's the difference between a labelled parcel and a hand injury.

A few things in this category get separated out further. Lighters go in their own small clear bag. Mercury items like household thermometers and mercury blood pressure gauges go in a separate see-through bag, packed so nothing can leak. Fluorescent tubes go back in the box they came in, or wrapped in newspaper.

One exception worth knowing: if a small appliance has a removable rechargeable battery, take the battery out and put it with recyclable resources instead. And nine specific device types — mobile phones, digital cameras, portable video cameras, mobile music players, mobile game devices, portable car navigation systems, electronic dictionaries, calculators, and accessories like remote controls, AC adapters and cables — are recycled as small electronic devices through collection boxes at the city office, branch offices and recycling centres, not through your kerbside bag. Delete your data before you hand anything over; collected devices aren't returned.

Sodai gomi: the 30cm cube test

This is the term you'll hear most and the one with the clearest definition. Large-sized waste — 粗大ごみ, sodai gomi — is anything that does not fit inside a cube measuring 30cm on every side. A small stuffed rabbit fits; a large teddy bear doesn't, and the official guide illustrates exactly that.

The rule that surprises everyone: taking it apart doesn't help. Even dismantled or disassembled items are still handled as large-sized waste. Breaking down a bookshelf into flat panels does not turn it into combustible garbage.

In practice it covers durable household goods — furniture, bedding, electrical appliances, bicycles — anything longer than 30cm on any side. Collection can also be refused depending on size and weight, so a very heavy item is worth asking about rather than assuming.

One boundary to know: the city doesn't collect large-sized waste generated by businesses or business activities. That's a separate commercial route.

How the sodai gomi booking and ticket actually work

It's three steps, and the order matters because you can't buy the right ticket until you've been told the fee.

First, measure. Confirm the item's size, weight, quantity and material before you apply — height, width, depth and the length of the longest side. Then book: Shinjuku's Large Sized Waste Reception Centre takes phone applications on 03-5304-8080, Monday to Saturday, 8:00am to 7:00pm, outside the year-end and New Year period. There's also an online application at shinjuku-sodai.com, available 24 hours a day apart from maintenance windows and the new-year break, which is the route I'd suggest if Japanese on the phone feels like a lot.

Second, buy the disposal ticket. Shinjuku uses two denominations — an A ticket at ¥200 and a B ticket at ¥300 — and you combine them to add up to the fee you were quoted. They're sold at shops displaying the paid-waste-disposal-ticket sign, at convenience stores and supermarkets, at waste collection offices and centres, at local special district offices, and at the Waste Reduction and Recycling Division on the 7th floor of the city office.

Third, put it out before 8:00am on the collection date, at the location you were given when you booked. Write the collection date and either your reservation number or your name on the ticket, and stick it somewhere clearly visible on the item.

Before you pay for any of that, it's worth a look at the recycling centres. Unwanted recyclable furniture is collected from your home, repaired and resold — Shinjuku Recycling Centre is at 4-10-2 Takadanobaba on 03-5330-5374, and the Nishiwaseda Recycling Centre is at 3-19-5 Nishiwaseda on 03-5272-5374.

What the city won't take at all

A specific list of items is not collected as large-sized waste, and booking a slot for one of them just wastes your morning. Air conditioners, TV sets, refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and clothes driers. Personal computers. Tyres. Pianos. Fire-resistant safes, fire extinguishers, and concrete blocks.

Most of these go back through the manufacturer or a specialist route rather than the ward — large appliances in particular have their own national recycling scheme with its own fee. If you're moving out and clearing a flat, this is the list to check first, because it's the one that turns a one-morning job into a two-week one.

Old clothes are the happier version of the same idea. Rather than bagging them as combustible waste, there are flea markets and bazaars, the recycling activity centre and recycling shops, and group collections.

Finding the calendar for your own street

This is the part no article can answer for you, and it's finer-grained than you'd expect. Collection days are set per town and often per chome. In the ward's own table, one neighbourhood has recyclables on Thursday, combustible waste on Tuesday and Friday, and metal/ceramic/glass on the 2nd and 4th Monday — while the street next to it is on a completely different rotation. Some blocks are even split by banchi number.

So look up your actual address rather than your ward. There's an official app for this, called さんあ〜る (San-R), which you can download and use to check both the separation rules and your collection days. Your ward office also distributes the printed guide in several languages, and Shinjuku publishes it in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean.

If you've just moved in, the fastest route is usually the building itself: the collection point and the days are often posted by the bins, and your building manager will have the local sheet.

What changes when you cross a ward line

I've used one ward in detail on purpose, because a vague national summary is what leaves you standing over a bin at 7:50am guessing. But be clear about what travels and what doesn't.

What's essentially universal: the 8:00am deadline, see-through bags, sorting into streams rather than one bin, wrapping and labelling anything sharp, booking and paying for oversized items, and the fact that large appliances sit outside the municipal system.

What changes with your address: the category names and how many there are, the collection days, the ticket denominations and where they're sold, the reception centre's phone number and website, and the exact size threshold for oversized waste. The 30cm cube is Shinjuku's line; your city may draw it elsewhere.

So treat everything above as a worked example that tells you which questions to ask, then confirm the answers against your own city's guide. If you've just arrived and haven't got a phone line sorted yet, that's worth doing first — the separation app, the online booking form and the ward's PDF all assume you're online.