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Seven-Eleven Japan to sell 'onigiri' in bioplastic wrappers

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Wandafuru!

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Well done Japan! Great for the environment.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

It's a good incentive, but it will have very little impact on the huge amount of single use plastics in japan. Most of the plastic wrapping used in Japan is totally unnecessary. The supermarkets are just a plastic storage warehouse. Everything is wrapped individually. You buy a pack of chocolates and you end up with a pile of plastic five times the size of the actual chocolates. You got to the fruit and veges department and find all these vegetables individually wrapped in plastic, carrots, zucchinis, bananas, potatoes, onions, sweet potatoes and many more. These foods all have skins and do not need to be individually wrapped. I am a plastic-conscious shopper, but if I want to eat, I can't avoid it. Every week I end up with a 20 liter 'plastic' bag full of plastic wrappings from foods, 90% of which are totally unnecessary.

9 ( +11 / -2 )

Good news, but as usual japan has a lot of catching up to do.

And if they stopped giving away plastic bags with every purchase large or small they'd save a lot more the 260 tones mentioned in the article.

AND sell take out coffee in similar plant based plastic or even better, customers' own mugs - not even an option as far as I know.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

This is just sloppy reporting..."By replacing a part of the wrapping's ingredients with a sugar-cane-derived material,..."

How much is "a part"? Just 5%, 15%, 25%, 50%? 80%? Is this a publicity stunt or the real thing?

Why not make it 100% and for all plastic wrapping? No one is saving their plastic for more than a few hours at the most. Get real. Time is not on our side.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

plant-derived plastics...  a sugar-cane-derived material

Not really plastic then, just looks and feels plastic. Very cool.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Commendable. Don’t stop there.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

It's a step in the right direction. But, they've got a lot of steps to go. It's shocking how mach packaging is used in Japan. So many things are individually wrapped that don't need to be. Why does each cookie in a box need to be individually wrapped? It's ridiculous.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

This is great. I also heard that seven eleven will start charging for their plastic bags instead of giving free.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Come'on...

Straws and Onigiri wrapping is not the problem and eliminating them (which won't happen) is not the solution.

Human civilization is built on 'consumption' and this requires energy to produce the things we consume and the things we consume create a whole lot of waste. Our entire economy is built on supply and demand.

Sorry, this is a false hope article. I've been reading them for 40 years...

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Disillusioned:

Ive seen the opposite too. A 50 pack of cookies with a single outer wrapper. If you don't eat all the cookies in a day or so, they get stale. Worst is the 2 litre soda. Unless you're having a party or you're kegging, that is gonna go flat fast. Better to have "indie wrapped" smaller containers.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Im sure there's a middle ground between wrapping wrappers around a wrapped cookie and a single wrapper around 50 cookies. If not, civilization is doomed.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Lots of keyboard warriors around here. If you were any kind of environmentalist, you would eat the wrapper instead of throwing it away.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

This sounds good but how biodegradable is the material? If it takes a long time and requires certain moisture/heat conditions, there isn't that much difference to a wrapper made of oil.

Gasoline produces 2.31 kg of CO2 per liter of use. So 403 tons of CO2 saved here is the equivalent of 170,000 liters of gasoline. Japan uses just under a million barrels of gasoline a day, which is 160 million liters. So this for a whole year is about 10% of one day's gasoline use. Every little helps of course, but for context, even just cars that are 1% more efficient, i.e., the owner bothering to run the car with the right tyre pressures, would make a bigger difference.

fwiw, if you run the same numbers for plastic bags, you get a similar result. Plastic bags are a litter problem. As a CO2 problem they are completely dwarfed by inefficient cars, inefficient houses, flying for leisure, meat-heavy diets etc.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

To be placed in a plastic bag for carry from the cash register to the rubbish bin.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

juminRhee - Worst is the 2 litre soda. Unless you're having a party or you're kegging, that is gonna go flat fast. Better to have "indie wrapped" smaller containers.

No, individually wrapped and smaller containers are not better. I guess the thought never occurred to you to buy smaller packs of cookies and smaller bottles of soda. The cookies you can put in a reusable container to stay fresh instead of buying a bag full of single use plastics and a few cookies.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

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