Environment

Japanese companies are rethinking how we make, use and dispose of products by creating substitutes to fossil fuel-based plastics.

The prime minister has called for Japan to be carbon neutral by 2050, but bolder measures look necessary to reduce the economic damage caused by global warming.

Author and environmentalist C.W. Nicol died on Friday after being diagnosed with cancer in 2016. As a long-standing contributor to The Japan Times, we asked his equally long-standing editor, Andrew Kershaw, to write a few words in memory of the award-winning conservationist

With COVID-19 pulling the world apart, it's the people, from healthworkers to thoughtful neighbors that can bring it back together.

The new decade kicked off with images of Australia in flames. As the country's bushland has burned over the past few months, more than an estimated 10 million hectares have already been reduced to ash. At least 28 people and more than a billion animals ...

Sitting silently among the rolling pastures, rice paddies and lush forests of the idyllic village of Otama are rows upon rows of photovoltaic solar panels — vast swaths of dark gray injecting dissonance into the postcard-like landscape local residents pride themselves on. These solar farms ...

How much single-use plastic do you think you consume in an average week living in Japan? What if you were to collect all the plastic bottles, shopping bags, food cartons, hand wipe wrappers, straws, cutlery, packaging, packaging-within-packaging and packaging-within-packaging-within-packaging that you accumulate in a week, ...

It's golden hour on Iki, a pristine island in southwestern Japan. A gentle breeze cools the day to a perfect 24 degrees Celsius. The roads are clean, the trees are green, a playground sits atop a grassy hill. Locals call Iki a "lucky island" ...

Over 1,000 residents and vacationers who had been stranded on a beach by bushfires in southeastern Australia landed near Melbourne on Saturday after a 20-hour journey on two ships, relieved to escape terrifying smoke and fire. Teenagers, couples, seniors and families, plus dozens of pets ...

When the Typhoon Hagibis floods hit Nagano, it near-destroyed the apple farms for which the area is famous, with contaminants in the floodwaters making it impossible to salvage any of the surviving fruit.