We all know what it’s like to get caught out in the rain when you are sightseeing. Japan is lucky to be a place with convenience stores on almost every street corner where you can always pick up a cheap, see-through plastic umbrella. However, these break easily and can be often be found discarded in trash cans, or worse, left by a road.
Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture is well-known for its heavy snow and rainfall, and also attracts large amounts of domestic and international tourists for its Kyoto-like historical districts and gardens. Since mid-December last year it has been working to keep its visitors dry in an eco way through the “Minna no eRe:Kasa” scheme (みんなのeRe:傘 or “Everyone’s Re-use Umbrella”).
[Image via Eri Takenaka's blog.]
Serving both as a convenient service for people caught in sudden rain without protection — and also as a way to reduce thrown-away broken convenience store umbrellas — the project has placed thirty re-used umbrellas each at twenty-one key spots in the center of the city, including the big JR station, sightseeing areas and shopping malls. The City held an inauguration event featuring the singer Eri Takenaka (above) accepting gifts of unneeded umbrellas from local residents, which would then be donated for the scheme.
No registration process is required and usage of the umbrellas is totally free. The City merely asks that borrowers return the umbrella, preferably to the same rental station or at least to another official one.
However, the Daily Yomiuri reported last month that already some one thousand of the fifteen hundred umbrellas are missing, and that the City will have to replace them. This raises the question of how to maintain the umbrella stock at the stations. One solution would be to make special umbrellas in a distinct design, so that people would be too shamed to steal one — or would be sure to return it if they accidentally took it home. However, surely making a new set of durable, unique umbrellas would be an expensive and highly non-eco method!
William is one of the editors of JapanTrends.com and a Project Manager at 
I can understand that concern of the expense of creating identifiable umbrellas. But the long term of this project, say the years to follow with identifiable umbrellas, would probably outlast the initial spending and encourage other companies or ideas on new implementations of reusable items. Reusable items at festivals may be something to explore… (if not done already).
@Ashley Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, there are going to be some teething problems of course. But I think you’re right that in the long term this type of project will change attitudes towards the disposable culture, especially in Japan where the price of convenience store goods is so low. That is often much more important for consumer trends than money. We’ll be keeping an eye on regional and urban developments like this to see how they pan out.
The number of forgotten/lost umbrellas in Tokyo alone on any given day must be beyond comprehension! Unfortunately, the low cost makes it unrealistic to create a “rental” business, so perhaps there are opportunities for retail to get these umbrellas and give them to customers. Restaurants and cafes come to mind in this case.
@Michael
That is a very interesting idea, I thought of perhaps the train stations could provide them to the customers who commute everyday – people who have long term cards … I personally have no idea how they issue tickets, here people would have a monthly ticket. This would present a good opportunity to introduce the distintive designs to each station that participates.
well can ask companys, facilities like restaurants, JR stations, library etc which have vase amount of lost umbrellas to donate them to this scheme so ppl can reuse them even they took those umbrella home…