It's not something Japanese people can ignore as someone else's problem.

Microbeads in cosmetics etc. are not banned in Japan, are they?

There is the further issue of microfibers, which leech out of washing machines every time synthetic clothing is washed. The fibers cannot be filtered out at water processing plants. Fleece clothing and blankets, both ubiquitous in Japan, are especially bad for microfibers.

10 years ago, before plastic straws etc. were trending news, I remember going to the beach at Maiko park in Kobe near the bridge, and being surprised at the technicolor sand. It was so full of sand-sized grains of colorful plastic. I wonder if it's still like that.

The tiny plastic stir-sticks at the coffee station at my Japanese combini are each individually wrapped in plastic. Is that necessary?!?

Would they prefer if the same lazy people instead threw paper and wood products into the river? Because it's the people who are to blame for being lazy.

Would they prefer if the same lazy people instead threw paper and wood products into the river?

Paper and wood decompose

Japan will be the last country on earth to do anything about plastic waste and over-use.

The professor is right. Japan is the land of plastic.

@lostrune2 Not overnight they don't. It would pile up much faster than mother nature can tend to it. Again, it's lazy humans causing the problem - dumping their trash where it doesn't belong. And besides the point, I thought we are meant to believe Japanese people are so tidy with trash (re: sporting event articles of clean locker rooms). They always bring their trash home with them. It's the dirty foreigners who are clogging the nation's rivers ?