Gome Pit, the Unusual Bar in a Waste Treatment Facility

At Gome Pit in Tokyo, customers can enjoy a cocktail with a view: the bar’s bay window overlooks a deep pit where tonnes of waste are piled up before being incinerated.

Located to the west of Tokyo, in the heart of Musashino Clean Center’s waste treatment facility, Gome Pit looks out onto the excavator grabbing tonnes of waste, while other windows act as touchscreens customers can use to find out more information about the place (for example the temperature of the incinerator and the quantity of waste incinerated that day). According to a report published in the International Journal of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Japan produced 437 million tonnes of waste in 2014, 50.6% of which was recycled, compared to 324 million in France, 64% of which was recycled.

Despite being a pop-up bar, it has won over the Japanese public, and the Musashino Clean Center remains open to visitors all year round, continuing its educative and preventative mission to encourage the public to recycle more of their everyday waste. The waste treatment centre has installed solar panels on its roof and created a vegetable garden where the compost is made entirely from waste.