Japan to oblige businesses to reduce 12 disposable plastic items

It is good to reduce single usage items, but the premise here is a little bizarre.

If you carefully place your used plastic in a recycling bin, you are not responsible for the plastic that washes up on a beach in Hawaii.

You are responsible for what you do. Not for what anyone else does.

Too many half measures. They need to just ban single use plastics and be done with it. The complete apathy Japanese people have towards waste is inexcusable in the year 2021. And the schools do nothing to educate children about pollution, the environment and animal cruelty. Japan really is 40 years behind.

Clothes hangers? I use mine for decades. Definitely not disposable. How about stir sticks? My combini always has scores of them piled up, and every single one is wrapped in....plastic! Crazy.

What about plastic bags from grocery stores and convivence stores?

Still allowed?

Worst are the q-tips. II clean my ears daily with them. They need to come up with bio-grade able ones than plastic ones.

Jind, get the ones made of stiff paper. They're more solid and clean year ears much better than the cheap bendy plastic ones.

Zichi

We are all responsible, but we are not equally responsible.

For instance owners of companies that make many millions but pollute many million times over than what I do personally…no sir, he or she is much much more culpable.

It's a first step although quite not enough.

Shopping bags are paid and we see a change there but again maybe just not enough.

And finally the biggest problem - food/grocery's trays - every single item (meat, veggies, etc. etc.) are in polystyrene tray and wrapped in polyethylene wrap. Not to mention okashi, chocolates - each byte in a single plastic that despite your best intention get blown by the wind and finds it's place in the ocean.

And this is all for convenience that people asked and corporations raced to assure! It will take decades to change that :(

Japan should just pull a Hawaii and ban all single use plastics.

Companies will respond by selling products like stirring kits, limited prints on straws and wet napkins.

City trash services can up the price on specialty bags to throw away such items to discourage people from just throwing the items out as usual.

People will be angry about for about a week and just adapt.

Doesn’t make so much sense, because those products are already there, have been produced and further will be. If not used and disposed individually, then in same number by anyone else and at once given to garbage or used anywhere else in other areas or countries. In addition, while under corona pandemic, many other plastic products are used in a much higher number worldwide. Look at all the nose or spit test sets, table separators in restaurants, hospital or other staff wearing more gloves, safety plastic suits. That alone , for India or China calculated, will surely outnumber your little sometimes spoon from the convenience store or plastic hanger when getting back your winter coat cleaned. In short words, it doesn’t play a significant role at all.

Who dumps plastic in the oceans??? I didn't!!! I put it in to recycle bin! Instead of punishing innocent public and businesses, find the people who do the dumping! they are in the recycling system, they do not want to pay for recycling so they dump it in the ocean. Find these people and punish them, force them to recycle instead of dumping!!! Investigate, trace, track the movement of plastic, find out who is handling it at every step, do the legwork because what you are proposing is not a solution!

Excess use of plastic bags was the most disappointing thing on my last trip to Japan. Bought 2 pairs of shoes and asked not to have the boxes. They put each pair in a labeled plastic bag and then both of those in a bigger bag.

Confused the bakery attendants when they wanted to put each item into a separate bag and then a big bag. When asked for them to be all in one bag they freaked out.

Need to seriously start with reducing pointless bag use

What about "Excessive food, bento and snacks/gifts packing"....

Cup Noodles have come in cups containing enough biomass to be marked as "paper" since 2008. If they are capable of holding noodles in boiling water, presumably they could be used to replace plastic trays. They will still be single use, but won't break down to produce as much microplastic. They are probably also less damaging when incinerated.

It frustrates me that the milk companies decided to add plastic spouts and lids to their paper cartons (to disguise that there's now less product for the same price).

I will not buy those brands. I'd suggest all of you give some consideration to that move, too.

thepersoniamnow, yes you are responsible as are we all. As consumers we have ultimate responsibility, if we don’t buy from these companies they would not be doing it, if consumers didn’t demand or at least acquiesce in this waste the companies would stop/not introduce it. Seeking to shunt the problem on to someone else is disingenuous.

The Japanese government needs to simply ban these single use plastic items, giving the companies a short period to use existing stock.

Remember the sustainable hierarchy, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Recycling is the least worst option not the solution.

As to plastic bags, as has been abundantly proved in the UK, charging a small sum does not achieve a sufficient reduction in them just boosts the shops profit margin as they now charge for what they had to give away free before and a very large number of people after the first shock, just buy a bag at the till. Those countries that totally banned them from the outset have been far more effective in reducing single use plastic bag waste.

Plastic in the ocean huh?

Well, charging me for a plastic spoon won't stop me from taking a long train ride to the nearest ocean and throwing it in..... Oh, wait; I never do that. I put the plastic where I am supposed to, in the plastics bin.

Why punish those who are already doing what they are supposed to do?

If the plastic are being dumped in the ocean, then stop doing that. Punish the companies that do it.

This is nothing to do with the individual. It's the responsibility of the corporations. But instead, blame the consumer and line the pockets of the culpable.

Better solution would be to build more Gassification plants and cleanly use the stuff to make electricity at the end of its life, then we can do away with separating our trash in the first place. A gassier can 'burn' everything including nuclear waste and does so in a profitable and clean way.

This is nothing to do with the individual. It's the responsibility of the corporations.

Exactly right. The industry PR machine propagates the message that "it's all up to us." It's not. 99% percent of this is about corporate and other high level behavior.

Ministop, for example, offers us only plastic stir sticks each wrapped in plastic. About the only choice we have is to use our fingers to stir our (hot) coffee, since the straws, and everything else is plastic, or not have any coffee at all. They know what they're doin, they have control and they know they can blame us at the end of the day.

Englisc

Completely expect fully disagree man!

I am most definitely not as responsible as say a car, straw, or gas company.

How ridiculous to assume that the consumer is equally to blame.

If I made a product that was massively harmful to earth, but made me rich, it would be more my fault than those who bought it.

In this day and age the user has responsibility too. But don’t tell me it’s on equal footing….that’s what the plastic dumping companies want you to say.

Now if I chuck my plastic bottle into the ocean, yeah man, that’s on me.