Amount of plastic used in Japan what pisses me off. Today I bought Japanese mayo and packaging is just ridiculous. Okay, mayo in a plastic bottle. I can live with that. But that bottle is not a PET bottle, so it’s not recyclable. And on top of that… The bottle is in plastic wrap. Which is also not recyclable.
You could say – then buy one from a different brand, that doesn’t do that. Well. Problem is every mayo looks like that.
It’s not just that… I was buying tampons and the cardboard box was wrapped in plastic, each tampon had a plastic wrapper and also plastic applicator. I haven’t found tampons without the applicators (also tampons are shit if you are coming here and you are not using menstrual cup bring a stash of your fav brand with you).
But you might have heard that Japan is good at recycling… And everywhere you need to sort trash. Sorting yes – true. However, sorting is to just to divide trash that can be burnt from what can be recycled. Only PET bottles, cans and glass bottles are going to recycling. Whole rest of the plastic gets burn.
There are others writing about that issue:
https://medium.com/social-innovation-japan/7-surprising-facts-about-plastic-in-japan-f6920cc8e621
I take my own fabric bag with me for shopping, but I have to stay vigilant – not every store ask if I need a bag and if I’m not quick enough they are already putting my stuff into bags…