What do Japanese do with plastic bottle caps and lids?

They throw them into trash bins for plastic bottle caps, of course!

PET bottle caps trash bin. Found in Adachi-ku City Hall, Tokyo.

In Japan, recycling is part of daily life. Besides separating caps from plastic bottles, people usually remove the labels from bottles as well before dumping them into recycle bins.

There even exists a special organization — The Council  for PET Bottle Recycling — established in 1993 for promotion, research and study of plastic bottle recycling.

A law for container and packaging recycling which also includes plastic bottles has been enforced in April 1997 by the Japan Ministry of the Environment.