What Didn't the Japanese Think Of?

Japan is a country that seems to have though of everything.  From the faucet that lets you wash your hands with water that is then used to flush the toilet, to the use of curbs in parking lots broken in the needless middle, it seems like most of the products in Japan were designed with some kind of foresight.  It's kind of funny to think about all the energy our country could save if we implemented some things like this.  

I feel like sometimes the American solution has to be big, brash and fantastic, and vast quantities of little changes that by themselves make small differences are overlooked.  It seems like we could do some much to limit our carbon emissions (or help the environment, because carbon emission seems like an annoying term to me) by just implementing a few things like this, even if we didn't try to make it retroactive.  Seriously, if more effort was made to make products recyclable, where would we be?  I haven't notices a huge problem in Japan (things cost more, but that's because of Japan's unfortunate situation as a developed island).  I also learned yesterday that Japan has no hydroelectric dams (meaning it has no dams at all, just to be clear.  It's partly for religious reasons, and partly to protect the water ecosystems.  I guess that our country wouldn't have been able to get by without using hydroelectric power (probably at more cost to the environment), but it would have been interesting.

My point is that with just a little effort American companies and the government could use already-existing technologies to greatly reduce our impact on the environment.  Simple things like what goes on over here in Japan, where even beer companies have a zero-waste policy (we visited Kirin's brewery in Yokohama yesterday).  I agree that some of these technologies has probably been developed because of the high price of most things, and the lack of space, but just because we can get away with it doesn't mean that we should continue to be so inefficient.

Our country's way of getting things done always had to involve the public's support, a way that seems to proliferate most of government policy (requiring demand for products and such).  However, it seems like this doesn't extend to war policy.

More on this later.