About 8 to 9 million tons of plastic waste are disposed of annually in Japan, a portion of which is not recycled or incinerated and is likely finding its way into the ocean and other natural environments.
But what can we do to reduce plastic waste?
Tomoyuki Hirose, 27, a Fukuoka resident who spent July practicing a life without single-use plastics, offers some insights in videos he shared online.
Four and a half hours
“This time, I'm going to try making miso soup without plastic!” Hirose starts to explain in a minute-long video. He says he searched the internet the day before and found a miso shop about two hours from his home that didn't use plastic containers for miso. “Two hours? Well, no room to ponder. So, I left home at 6:30 a.m. and went to the miso shop as soon as it opened!” he says, talking fast in high pitch, while rapidly showing short clips of a few seconds each.
It was the 19th day of his plastic-free challenge. After a 4½-hour round trip by subway and train, he returned home with miso put into his favorite silicone container instead of plastic wrapping. He cooked himself miso soup with potatoes and onions. “Miso soup is the best!” he concluded.
This was the second time Hirose had taken on the monthlong plastic-free life project after first doing it July of last year. The practice derives from the “plastic-free July” environmental movement that began in Australia in 2011, which has grown to have more than 100 million annual participants around the world.
Replacing plastic
Hirose's biggest challenge in experimenting with a plastic-free life was cutting out the packaging. Most products in supermarkets, including fresh foods such as meat and fish, as well as daily necessities like toilet paper, come in plastic packaging, making them off limits during the challenge.
To get around this, he prepared reusable bags and jars for food preservation — making the most use of silicone containers — which he brought to stores to take home unpacked food, such as fresh meat, fish and tofu. The silicone containers can also be used in refrigerators, freezers and microwaves. He also used these containers for taking out curry and udon noodles from restaurants.
For drinks, he brought his own tumbler, using it for coffee at convenience stores. He searched for stores that sold cooking oil, soy sauce and other seasonings by weight and had the stores put them in bottles.
For daily necessities, he purchased solid shampoo, cut-up soap and detergent sold by weight at specialty stores. He found a toothbrush made of bamboo with pig bristles, and he ordered online a bottled toothpaste that came in granular form. For doing dishes, he used a loofah scrubber.
Cost and time
While in university, Hirose reported on poverty issues in Southeast Asia as a student aspiring to become a journalist.
In 2019, he established a company with his friends to report on social issues and has been posting videos under the name Rice Media on YouTube and other social media. Living without plastics is one of those video projects.
Having completed the project, he realized that going plastic-free "takes a lot of time and money." It took him about 40 minutes by subway and on foot to get to a fresh fish store and a store that sold seasonings by weight. He couldn’t go there that often and frequently ran out of supplies, so he had to resort to simple rice with egg for his meals.
During the project, he went on research trips, including a visit to speak with a fisherman in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, who collects garbage from the bottom of the Seto Inland Sea, and to Kamikatsu, Tokushima Prefecture, which aims to achieve a “zero waste” society by thoroughly sorting garbage.
He also reported on a marine waste collector installed in Miyazu, Kyoto Prefecture, by a Kumamoto-based company, and an artist living in Ishikawa Prefecture who makes art from waste that has drifted ashore. The most impressive activity, he says, was the “operation zero waste” project at the Gion Festival in Kyoto, in which food stalls switched to reusable dishes from disposable ones.
Meanwhile, Hirose encountered some unexpected pitfalls as well.
One day, when he bought a cup of coffee from a vending machine that sold beverages in paper cups, the cup came out with a plastic lid. As a “punishment” for violating the rules, he spent eight hours picking up plastic waste on the shore of Shikanoshima island in Fukuoka Prefecture, collecting more than he could hold in both hands.
Over the course of a month, his household trash was reduced to less than half the usual amount. He released 22 videos, getting about 28 million views in total. The videos received a variety of comments from viewers, such as “I will try to do something” and “I stopped taking plastic bags.” There were also voices of skepticism with a viewer saying, “one person's effort will not change society,” although Hirose says many of the comments were positive.
He still carries reusable bags and silicone containers to go to fresh fruit and vegetable stores and meat stores, and washes dishes with a loofah scrubber. “I don't think I can change society alone,” he says. “But I want to get more people to feel the same way by continuing to do small things.”
Businesses taking initiatives
Efforts on the part of companies that manufacture and sell plastic products are essential to reducing plastic waste. Some companies are collecting used plastic containers while others are switching to alternative materials for their products.
At a contact lens store SeeBest Contact in the city of Fukuoka, a recycle box is provided to collect disposable contact lens containers. Each empty container weighs about 1 gram. According to the store, about 20 customers a week use the box, which fills up in about two weeks.
The box is placed by Seed, a major contact lens maker in Tokyo. The company started the recycling project in 2019, having placed boxes at 361 locations nationwide, including retailers and eye clinics. It accepts other companies' products and collects the containers regularly to transform them into pallets through a recycling company.
So far, the company has collected about 3.5 tons in total. Even so, the amount accounts for less than 1% of the total volume the company has shipped in Japan. “The number of partner companies and the amount collected are increasing every year. We hope to expand it further,” a company official said.
Tokyo-based Hoya, which operates Eyecity contact lens stores, has also been collecting empty containers since 2010 at some 5,000 locations, including its contact lens stores and municipal offices. By August this year, it collected about 492 tons in total, which have been recycled into auto parts and stationery.
Meanwhile, daily goods manufacturers have started industry-wide projects to collect used plastic containers.
Tokyo-based Unilever Japan started a “Umile” eco-point program in 2020, under which it gives points to consumers who put used containers of its shampoo and other products into collection boxes at supermarkets, or who buy refills. The points can be exchanged for shopping points on the Line app or for reusable bags. About 750,000 people have registered to the program.
In June last year, Unilever also began its joint project with Kao in Tokyo and some other areas to recycle plastic containers from any manufacturer. Lion and P&G Japan joined the project in December.
According to Unilever, it is currently difficult to produce high-quality recycled containers for daily necessities because the materials used by each company are different and an organized collection system is not in place yet. “We would like to establish a technology that goes beyond company boundaries and come up with a standard for containers that can be shared by the entire industry,” a company official said.
Nonplastic materials
The development of nonplastic materials is also an urgent task.
In 2019, UPay, a Fukuoka-based digital systems developer, launched a "rice straw," which is an additives-free straw made of rice and cornstarch. For cold drinks, the straw can maintain its strength for about two hours, and can be reused as fertilizer afterward, according to President Yui Jokan.
Although the rice straw’s wholesale price is about four times that of plastic, about 120 million units were sold to restaurants and lodging facilities in Japan and abroad last year, Jokan said.
Other companies are taking initiatives as well. Tokyo-based cutting tool manufacturer Kai has launched a "paper razor," which uses paper as a handle. The razor can be assembled and is durable even when it gets wet if the water temperature is below 40 degrees.
Kobe-based food-maker Nestle Japan has switched to paper for the packaging of its Kit Kat and other products. It has introduced paper straws for some of its beverages.
Atsuhiko Isobe, professor of marine physics at Kyushu University's Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, said it is difficult to completely dispose of plastic waste properly, so the important thing is to reduce the total amount. “Society as a whole should welcome and accept the development of materials with low environmental impact,” he said.
This section features topics and issues from the Kyushu region covered by the Nishinippon Shimbun, the largest daily newspaper in Kyushu. The original articles were published Oct. 7.
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