We shouldn’t treat plastic as an enemy, nor ostracize those who use it. What’s needed is appropriate management of trash and to search for solutions through innovation.

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True.

Plastic has been with us since the late 1800's ,starting with celluloid which molded wasmade into billiard balls ,placing ivory . And it, then also became the primary agent for photography.

We cannot live without plastic today.

The wonder is that it is only now - so late in the evolution of plastic , when we are over our heads in plastic - are those in leadership beginning to make attempts of re-purpose these products.

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What’s needed is appropriate management of trash... 

I think a bigger problem is the excessive, mindless use of it. My local combini seals every single coffee stir stick in its own plastic bag. Totally unnecessary, never mind they should be aspen.

This political message bought and paid for by...

We can massively reduce our use and waste of plastic AND seek appropriate management of its waste via technology concurrently. The two are not opposing actions.

We absolutely should strongly discourage the superfluous use of plastic at all levels. I mean, what exactly is his message here?

Sounds like Abe is using a straw man. I have never heard plastic being demonized this way.

I have heard previous generations being demonized for destroying our environment. To be fair, though, they simply didn't know. It may seem obvious in hindsight, but it wasn't at the time. We are probably doing things right now that will be looked on the same way on the future.

We have a lot of work to do in achieving sustainability, and we are just at step one.

We shouldn’t treat plastic as an enemy, nor ostracize those who use it.

Let's hope the actual meaning was lost in translation cause it's a pretty silly thing to say.

Plastic IS (one of) the enemy and we all have to learn to reduce our plastic dependency.

It's easy to understand the reason why there's so much plastic used these days - for many companies it's the cheapest option.

I can't stand Abe, but I have to agree with him on this one. The best solution is innovation.

Plastic is literally a super material. Light, easy to mold, cheap and the best thing, it's indestructible! Which makes it ironic, because we use it for 5 seconds and we throw it.

Plastic is made from oil, so the oil companies have pushed plastic on us everywhere....back to reusable, returnable glass bottles, bring back municipal water fountains (remember those?), and get off oil before the planet hits the high mark on irreversible climate chaos feedback loops.

While you are searching for solutions Mr Abe (and I don't remember you ever find any so far), we know that reducing the use of plastic is a sure way to reduce the need to produce it and reduce the amount of trash (that you will manage someday...).

There is a big difference with using plastic and wasting it. Of course, a lots of objects made of plastic totally or partially are really great and useful and they last a long time. But now Japan wastes incredible amounts of single use or not even used containers, chopsticks, and over-packaging. Nobody needs a bag around a pack of 2 individually packed cookies, that makes 3 layers, and you need only one... but you get all the time at the kombini. So you have a country (not the only one) that could halve its plastic consumption overnight and hardly feel a difference. But the leader says "no, no... wait"

The world needs to follow Canada's lead and ban single-use plastics.