Japanese firms look to paper products to reduce plastic waste

Maybe stop packaging cakes and bread in multiple layers of plastic might also help!!

Awfully wasteful !

My wife and I spend hours each morning picking up huge amounts of plastic garbage from Kamogawa beaches, too much single use plastic in Japan and the locals don't seem to care.

I thought the whole recycled plastics thing was to "save the trees"???

So, cut more trees??

Yes, and then replant them to grow and capture more carbon and keep the industries going. Make it a cycle and it provides more jobs.

So instead of senbei wrapped in a package with three wrapped cylinders inside which are individually wrapped senbei in plastic (oh yeah, I forgot about the tray that comes in each package) it will be in paper? And since the paper will leak grease, will it be in another wrapper?

The first thing to think about is not what something is packaged with, but how it is packaged here. Only then do you start to change the material in which it is wrapped.

It is absurd that chocolate should be packed in a total of 4 layers of some kind of packaging when only 2 are enough. And it doesn't matter if it's plastic, paper or anything else.

Same with the various obento boxes, where there's more plastic than the food itself.

Unfortunately, Japan has a long way to go but by just refusing packaging as a consumer can have a positive effect

So, cut more trees??

They need to stop asking people if they want a "Reggy Bukuro" at checkout. Unless they've got a big handful of items, they don't need one. And if they had to ask for one, a lot of people just wouldn't bother.

I thought the whole recycled plastics thing was to "save the trees"???

If only people were not lazy and actually put their plastic trash in a recycling bin.... More often it is left to blow around and enter the environment. Recycling only works when people care enough to do so. Too many simply do not care.

Japanese wrap every thing in plastics, even a slice of a freshly baked Pizza then in becomes a TOFU after 1 minute.

MacD. still using plastic straws.