Job Discussion Forums

[Black_Beer_Man]

Good news for the oceans and mother Earth. France has passed an initiative to phase out plastic cups, plates and bags.

Slim chance of ever seeing such a policy in Japan I guess?

Of all the countries I have been to, I have never seen so much disposable plastic for sale as Japan has.

Just enter 1 convenience store and you see hundreds of bentos (take away meals) packed in plastic containers and sealed with cellophane wrapping. And they'll be replaced the next day with new ones.

Buy a package of cookies and you'll get
a plastic wrapper for the package of cookies
a plastic tray holding the cookies in place
and each cookie wrapped in its own wrapper of plastic.

Almost every food item in Japan is over-packaged in plastic (with the exception of some fruits and veggies).

I would love to see Japan take some sort of action in reducing its plastic consumption. https://youtu.be/n9JT4CgJwZA

[TokyoLiz]

That's great news from Frnace.

While there is no national level initiative to reduce plastic, prefectures and cities in Japan have campaigns to reduce plastic.http://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id027819.html

Japan's plastic recycling rate is very high compared to other countries. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/dec/29/japan-leads-field-plastic-recycling

At our house, we hardly ever buy bento lunches or osozai in plastic boxes, or bring in individually wrapped treats. We pack lunches to work in our own bento boxes. We refuse plastic bags, too.

In our city, we pay for garbage bags. I'm fed up bringing home plastic I don't want, and then paying to dispose of it. So, at the supermarket, I take fruit or veg out of the packages, put them in my own cloth bags or furoshiki, and leave the bulky plastic packages in the bin. I see other customers do this all the time.

We have a lot of guests (students from abroad), and we cook for them so they don't rely on packaged foods from the conbini.

[kzjohn]

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons...

...uh, plastic bags.

[rxk22]

That would be great. I hate all the plastic pollution, esp in East Asia. Wonder if they'd even try it here. Not a big supporter of France, but I hope it works out for them

[Black_Beer_Man]

TokyoLiz, while Japan's recycling rate is impressive compared with other countries, wouldn't it be far better if the companies here made a lot less plastic in the first place? And that the food companies used less of it for packaging?

Cookies don't need to be individually wrapped. I believe this is done because Japan's humidity makes them soggy if they're not protected from the air. However, a "Tupperware" type reusable food container solves that problem.

Plastic production requires oil, a non-renewable resource.

Plastic that gets buried in landfills pollutes the ground water because rain water causes the plastic to leach chemicals into the earth.

One of your articles mentions that a lot of plastic does get burned in Japan. I don't know how polluting the incinerators are, but I do know that when you burn plastics, cancer-causing dioxins are released.

From your Guardian article:

"Japan differs from other countries in that it tends to overwrap," Carroll said. "You buy a bento boxed lunch and it comes in a plastic box with a lid, and then it's put into a plastic bag. Lots of other foodstuffs are the same.

"There's a tremendous amount of plastic around. The real problem is with household plastic, a lot of which gets burned or buried. The amounts involved are phenomenal."

Kamiya agrees that Japan needs to address the 27% of plastic waste that is simply incinerated or buried in increasingly scarce landfill sites.

[ssjup81]

Good on France. You know, I wish Japan used durable paper bags for groceries, like back home.