Selling U.S. Garbage Disposers in Japan Becomes a Real Grind

In Japan, the most high-tech products are commonplace, but the garbage disposer--a 50-year-old appliance considered essential by many Americans--is found in very few Japanese kitchen sinks.

The Japanese government doesn’t prohibit disposer sales. In fact, disposers carry no import tariffs. But the country’s Ministry of Construction has stymied sales activity by urging department stores not to stock disposers and discouraging builders from installing disposers in homes.

The Ministry of Construction says Japan’s sewers aren’t up to speed to handle the added waste caused by disposers. U.S. manufacturers, who have a 98% share of the Japanese disposer market, disagree and they argue that the government discourages sales because Japanese manufacturers don’t make a competitive disposer.

Because disposer distributors must resort to door-to-door marketing to sell their product, a disposer that costs as little as $30 in home improvement stores in the United States sells for more than $400 in Japan.

“We’re fighting a political battle. The people want disposers. But they’re told not to buy them,” said Ed Chavez, president of the American Manufacturers & Exporters of Disposers Assn. The Anaheim-based association was formed in April to petition the Ministry of Construction to end its 2-year-old disposer opposition.

Before the Ministry of Construction took its negative stand, disposer sales had been flourishing. Sales increased to 29,424 units in 1986 from 14,563 in 1984. But following the negative reports from the Ministry of Construction, the market collapsed and only 16,362 disposers were sold last year.

Aggressive Marketing

Chavez said the government expressed little concern with disposers until they became popular. Racine, Wis.-based In-Sink-Erator had been selling its disposers in Japan since the late 1960s with little opposition, and Thermador/Waste King in Los Angeles began selling in Japan in the early 1970s.

But disposers weren’t aggressively promoted until 1985 when Anaheim Manufacturing entered the market.

“We saw Japan as a wonderful, wealthy market that needed disposers. They have a terrible trash problem, and our disposers would help eliminate that,” Chavez said.

In 1985, Anaheim Manufacturing’s disposers were sold in Japan’s biggest department stores, according to Takeshi Itoh, an adviser to Nikko Trading, a Tokyo-based company that markets Anaheim Manufacturing disposers.

“All of a sudden, the stores stopped ordering them. And the newspapers wouldn’t take ads. It wasn’t against the law, but it might as well have been,” Itoh said in a telephone interview from Tokyo.

The Ministry of Construction warned that a disposer in every home would pollute and overload the sewer system, according to U.S. trade officials familiar with the disposer issue. Ministry of Construction officials could not be reached for comment.

Concerns about sewage systems have greeted garbage disposer makers since the 1940s, when In-Sink-Erator found a huge demand for its product in the United States.

To combat the problem, marketers of disposers conducted extensive tests in many U.S. cities and found that disposers didn’t harm sewage systems and greatly improved city sanitation standards, according to Brian Cuiper, product manager of Thermador/Waste King in Los Angeles. Many American cities, including Los Angeles, require that disposers be installed when housing developments are built.

Environmental experts agree that Japan’s sewage system is primitive compared to even the U.S. sewage system of 40 years ago.

“Large parts of the sewage system in Japan are still uncovered,” said Gordon Berger, a USC professor and director of the USC East Asian Studies Center in Los Angeles.

But Tokyo and other large cities have modern systems, Berger said.

Cuiper said: “If everyone had a disposer in Japan, then there might be a problem. That’s what they’re worried about. But that’s not going to happen.” He noted that disposers have been widely marketed in the United States for 40 years, yet just over 51% of all households have disposers, according to the Assn. of Home Appliance Manufacturers in Chicago.

To win over the Ministry of Construction, AMEDA has pledged to restrict U.S. disposer imports to 1% of all of Japan’s households, or 390,000 disposers, for each of the next 12 years. That sales volume would be more than 20 times last year’s disposer sales.

U.S. manufacturers also have agreed not to sell disposers in areas where residents aren’t hooked to a sewage system.

U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres (D-Calif.) met with officials of the ministries of Construction and Finance last year to seek improved relations between the Japanese government and disposer makers.

“We told them we would not flood their country with imports. But, even that met with some opposition . . . and they gave us their scientific reasons for opposing disposers,” said Robert Alcock, Torres’ administrative assistant.

Chavez said that in response to AMEDA’s pledges, the Ministry of Construction agreed to neutralize its position. “But they refuse to retract their statements,” he said. “And I was told that they have backed away from their neutrality.”

Because no law prohibits disposer imports, the U.S. government is restricted in the actions it might take, trade officials said.

“It’s difficult for us to impose our standards on them because every country has to set its own standards,” said Gary Holmes, a spokesman for trade representatives at the White House.

Trade officials acknowledge that garbage disposers don’t receive the same attention as other U.S. exports such as citrus or beef, which have a greater impact on the U.S.-Japan trade imbalance.

“This is not going to go all the way to the President,” said an official at the Japanese trade department of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The spokesman, who asked not to be identified, said the problem of disposers is similar to difficulties of many U.S. companies that don’t agree with Japanese policies.

Companies might believe that policies are discriminatory, but little can be done without blatant evidence that a country is restricting sales to allow its industry time to develop a competitive product, Holmes said.

Simple Appliance

Followers of Japanese trade cite several examples, from skis to baseball bats, where Japan restricted sales of U.S. products, then developed competitive products.

“I understand Japan’s concerns for its sewage system. But the basic argument sounds similar to remarks as to why other foreign products aren’t suitable for sale in Japan,” said Bergen at USC.

Jergen Umbhau, at In-Sink-Erator, said he isn’t convinced that the Japanese are at work developing a better disposer.

“It’s a fairly simple appliance. It has a one-half horsepower engine, it’s stainless steel, it has grinding elements and plastic housing. A number of small companies around the world make 5,000 or 10,000 per year.”

Unless stores begin carrying disposers again, disposer sellers will be forced to sell door-to-door, or perhaps set up “large distributor networks of residents, similar to Amway Corp.,” Itoh said.

“There’s still nothing wrong with owning one,” Itoh said. And manufacturers are surprised by some of the people who are buying disposers.

Alcock said one disposer maker sold a disposer to a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who gave the appliance to his mother.

“I wouldn’t be without mine,” said Itoh, who has had a disposer in his home for three years.