Japan aims to reduce plastic waste, national legislation is in the works
By Xieyang Jessica Qiao
If you are in Tokyo, you have probably noticed that store cashiers are ready to hand you a plastic bag for virtually anything — even just that one candy bar.
Single-use plastic bags are disappearing rapidly from the United States and Europe, but that’s not yet the case in Japan. Mary Alice Haddad, visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said Japan’s dependency on plastic bags originates from the demand for hygiene and convenience.
“When purchasing food, it is preferable to use virgin plastic bags to keep one’s commodities clean and to separate wet commodities from dry ones,” Haddad said. “There is a tension in Japan as there is in many places between a sense of environmental responsibility and a desire for convenience.”
Even though most urban areas in Japan burn plastic bags using high-powered modern incinerators to reduce pollutants, the incineration of plastic bags — the majority of which are made from crude oil — still releases toxic smoke and disrupts the environment.
“In terms of getting rid of waste, modern incinerators are not as bad as landfills,” Haddad said. “But it’s still a waste and it’s still plastic that is being burned. So it’s still toxic- even though they do try to scrub the toxicity out of the exhaust.”
The best alternative is to have people carry their own reusable bags. But when Japan’s Ministry of the Environment proposed in 2005 that stores charge for plastic bags to encourage shoppers to bring their own bags, convenience stores objected.
“In many cases, consumers are not ready to bring their own bags because they drop by stores on their ways randomly and are likely to buy ‘bento’ [lunch box] that is microwaved, which is too hot to carry in hands,” said Naomi Inoue, associate professor at Sophia University in Tokyo. “Convenience stores insisted that charging would have a negative impact on their sales.”
Fourteen years later, that mindset is changing — Japan’s plastic pollution in the ocean has stoked demand for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) actions. Each year, about eight million metric tons of plastic waste enters the world’s oceans. When plastics are broken down into particles by ultraviolet light and waves, they absorb harmful substances and accumulate inside fish, potentially disrupting the ecosystem.
This environmental crisis, along with Japan’s 3Rs approach to reduce waste, reuse and recycle resources, has jump-started the environmental consciousness of retailers.
“Convenience store retailers admit that their business model is based on the consumption of a variety of plastics and charging [for plastic bags] will impact their [business],” Inoue said. “But they also admit that it’s inevitable. This is a big step forward, when we have the history of failing to charge for plastic bags in the past.”
Ayako Takada, program director at NHK, Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, said convenience stores and supermarkets are promoting eco-bags on the local level and “customers who do not need plastic bags can often get two- or three-yen discount of the total payment.”
In 2008, the Suginami district in Tokyo established the first ordinance in Japan promoting a charge on plastic bags. By 2015, about 34 percent of consumers in the Suginami district refused to use plastic bags as a result of the edict and that percentage continues to soar.
“Now, about 53 percent of customers in Japan coming to supermarkets refuse to use virgin plastic bags,” Inoue said. “Japanese citizens have made headway in carrying their own shopping bags and refusing to use virgin plastic bags.”
While a national legislation banning single-use plastic bags is yet to be established, Japan’s Ministry of the Environment unveiled the “Resource Circulation Policy for Plastics” draft last year, which is now on track to become a national strategy. This policy proposal is expected to promote resource circulation and solve the marine plastic waste crisis in the marine and coastal environment.
“It is reported that the Japanese government aims to bring this strategy to the 2019 G20 Osaka summit in June this year,” Inoue said. “They also plan to establish a legal framework for it after 2020.”
By charging for plastic bags and enforcing environmentally sound management of plastic wastes, the government aims to reduce the consumption of single-use plastics by 25 percent and to recycle 60 percent of plastic packaging, including plastic bags, by 2030, Inoue said.
Other solutions to the plastic waste problem, such as biodegradable plastic bags, have been promising. But Inoue warned there may be unintended consequences.
Biodegradable plastic bags are made from fermented plant starch, such as corn. The use of large crops to manufacture plastic bags could lead to higher food prices and higher carbon dioxide emissions, Inoue said.
And at the end of the day, it still takes time for them to degrade in the water.
