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© KYODOCabinet approves bill to reduce plastic waste, encourage recycling
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Thomas Tank
Finally! A law with some bite.
didou
When I was a kid, all biscuits were in one pack. Now, for the same brand, the pack of 16 has been divided into 4 small packs with plastic around. Just an example, but the society has changed to add plastic everywhere. Here in Japan, most people do always wrap their meat or fish pack in an additional thin plastic bag.
Problem is not to improve the recycling process though it is important but reduce the plastic consumption,
and also educate people not to throw. Cities are clean here. but in the country side, there is a lot of plastic thrown along the road, pet bottles, bentos, etc.
bo
Supermarkets should just remove all plastic bags then there is no choice, then provide bags that are are biodegradable people will have to use them,
Kiwikid
I'd really like to see plastic bags banned outright like they are in NZ. If you don't bring a bag your choices are use a cardboard box or buy an overpriced reusable bag.
This law is scheduled for 2022, I hope the facilities will be made and or upgraded to deal with this. The vast majority of recyclables in my area are combined with regular rubbish and incinerated.
As always government statistics will include this "thermal recovery" as recycling. Boasting among the highest plastic recycling rates in the world at over 80 percent.
A more pragmatic look states
There's a cliff we're standing on. Do you build a fence to stop people jumping or a trampoline at the bottom to hopefully catch them? Recycling is good for those that get through; stopping it before it happens should be priority. I'm glad to see that being addressed in this law.
Robert Cikki
Japan has a serious rubbish problem and it's not wanting to face it. We pretend to be into recycling by separating rubbish as burnable, non burnable, but in reality most of it gets shipped to China and/or mostly burned straight away. Just a fraction is really recycled.
Also, plastic separation basically doesn't exist here. There are many kinds of plastic, like casein plastic. Or you can't handle PE as PVC, or as PP or PS. Yet, in here, it's all thrown into the garbage bag for plastic and done. Not speaking of individual packaging of each cookie, etc.
Plastic bags should be banned or heavily taxed. Just a few Yen for a レジ袋 is a joke. If someone points out that we should follow other countries like Germany or so, someone else finds an excuse for why we need it like this in here and why we are so special.
Just look every few days in front of your house. There is so much レジ袋 inside the garbage bags, inside many レジ袋 is just another plastic obento pack which is usually wrapped in a サランラップ and sometimes each convenience store puts another plastic label over it with a picture and other nonsense.
Goodlucktoyou
Why not today? Surely it’s already prepared?
I noticed that since charging for bags many people bring their own. Also businesses can rip off customers by selling ¥0.3 bags for ¥3.
unfortuately, I do beach cleaning and the amount of plastics and cans hasn’t reduced.
Mr Kipling
I hear that 89% of the "recycled" plastic we separate in Tokyo is just burnt.. 100% in Yokohama!
tooheysnew
they should be charging ¥30
noriahojanen
It takes limited effects and only serve at best as an awareness campaign to the public. Industrial plastic wastes are far larger in size and responsible for environmental problems. Unfortunately, pro-business LDP ministers like Koizumi seem reluctant to tackle the critical area. They try to find and target easy preys.
WilliB
....while at the same time forcing restaurants and shops to go to delivery service and plastic-sheeting the entire country. Brilliant.
Pukey2
Forget about sorting out garbage into plastic and burnable. At my place, I've noticed that if plastic is thrown out on the same day as burnable, they're still collected - and I suspect just burned altogether. I can tell which is plastic because we have to buy different coloured bags for different types of garbage. Yeah, more plastic bags. At my old place, you could just use an ordinary plastic bag.