'Horizontal recycling' tackling waste and giving plastics 2nd life

Plastic can be turned into bricks for construction.

If you buy 50gm of ham sliced so thin it's see through, you also have to take home the same weight in packaging. A tray with a few pieces of meat and fish arranged artfully will also force you to take home the same weight in plastic. If you go to a bakery here, and buy 5 or 6 items, you will probably have around 15 wrapping items. Things are sold in small units to disguise how ridiculously overpriced they are. This is the main source of the problem.

Plastics are also processed along with other waste via thermal recovery, which involves utilizing heat generated when trash is incinerated.

This is one of those 'only in Japan' kind of gobbledegook phrases that want to disguise the fact that they're talking about burning plastic. That is not some kind of solution, it's a problem, as tokyo_m commented.

Most Japanese are unaware that the vast sea of plastic that manufacturers here churn out in the interest of profit is exported elsewhere where there's less regulation, and often therefore ends up in the ocean or the soil as microplastics.

And the incinerators only operate at night, so people don’t see it. The world is all nonsense.

@as_the_crow_flies.

True up to a point, and buying in bulk is a plan when you can. But single people need to be able to buy relatively small amounts of perishable food products.

All of our soft plastic waste (food packaging etc) is stored at home each week and then taken to the local supermarket where it goes into a recycling bin. Hard plastic goes with cardboard in a kerbside wheelie bin. Governments need to mandate the use of easily recyclable plastics for packaging. This avoids complexity in the recycling industry, which increases costs and lowers the % recycled.