A road in Chiba, a city in Japan, is closed because of heavy rain. The road is part of Route 16, a big road in Japan. In Murata-cho, a part of Chuo Ward in Chiba, the road goes through an underpass*1. The closed part is about 1 kilometer*2 long. It runs from the Furuichiba intersection*3 in Hamano-cho to the intersection on the west side of Hamano Station in Murata-cho.
アンダーパス
The road was closed at 12:30 a.m. on Monday, September 7. That is half an hour after midnight. No cars can use the underpass in either direction.
The Chiba National Highway Office closed the road. This is a government office that looks after big roads. It is part of the Kanto Regional Development Bureau, which belongs to Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.
Typhoon*4 No. 24 brought heavy rain to the area. A level 4 heavy rain danger warning*5 was announced. The office closed the road so that cars do not have accidents when water covers the road.
The office has a rule for this underpass. It closes the road when one of three things happens. First, a level 4 heavy rain danger warning is announced. Second, 50 millimeters*6 of rain falls in one hour, or that much rain is expected. Third, road workers or the police think water may cover the road. This time, the first thing happened.
The office will announce when the road opens again.
*1 underpass: a part of a road that goes under another road or a railway
A new recycling*1 box is now collecting old phones and batteries at Takanawa Gateway City in Tokyo, the capital of Japan. The box is called Bin-e. It uses AI*2 to sort the things that people put in it. The box stands near a Lawson convenience store*3 on the sixth floor of a building called THE LINKPILLAR 1 NORTH. It will be there from September 1 to November 30.
The company Forcetec announced the news on September 3. Forcetec sells Bin-e in Japan. Six companies are working together on the project. KDDI, a large phone company, leads the project with Lawson and the other companies.
People can put three kinds of things in the box: used mobile phones and smartphones, power banks*4, and heated tobacco devices*5 and e-cigarettes*6. The things must not be broken or swollen*7. All of these products have lithium-ion batteries*8 inside.
Bin-e looks at each thing, and its AI decides what it is. It sorts the things correctly at least 95 times out of 100. A screen 50 inches*9 wide on the box shows what people can put in and how to do it. Sensors*10 inside the box tell the companies how full it is. They can check this from far away.
Lithium*11-ion batteries can catch fire. For this reason, the companies added a special inner box for this project. The inner box has a film that stops fire. The film is made by TOPPAN, a Japanese company. This is not a normal part of Bin-e.
The companies have two reasons for collecting these products. In Japan, many products with lithium-ion batteries are not collected in the right way. They go into normal trash, and they sometimes start fires at places that handle trash. This has become a big problem. Also, these batteries have important metals inside, like lithium, cobalt*12 and nickel*13. People want to use these metals again.
Each company has a job. KDDI runs the project and tells people about it. It also recycles*14 the phones. Lawson tells people about the project. JR East Building gives the space for the box. JX Metals Circular Solutions carries away and recycles the power banks and heated tobacco devices. Future Ecology carries away and recycles the phones. Forcetec provides Bin-e and helps to run it. A company called Bine in Poland develops and makes the box. Bine started in 2009.
This is the second Bin-e box in Japan. The first one stands in the main office building of the Tokyo government. The Tokyo government started a campaign*15 in June 2026 to collect lithium-ion batteries there. That box started working on June 26 under an older name, "Weecle technology by Bin-e." In September, the name changed to "Bin-e."
The companies want to learn if people will bring their old phones and batteries to places they visit every day, like a convenience store. They will study the results. Then they will think about putting boxes in more places.
*1 recycling: using old things again to make new things
*2 AI: a computer program that can learn and make decisions
*3 convenience store: a small store that sells food and everyday things
*4 power banks: small batteries that you carry to charge your phone
*5 heated tobacco devices: small electric tools that heat tobacco so people can smoke it
*6 e-cigarettes: electric cigarettes that make a vapor for people to breathe in
*7 swollen: bigger than normal, like a battery that has puffed up
*8 lithium-ion batteries: the kind of battery that is inside phones and many other electric things
*9 inches: a unit for measuring length; one inch is about 2.5 centimeters
*10 sensors: small parts of a machine that feel or measure something
