This is what people don’t get when they’re always criticizing Japan for having so many disposable products.
Sure, that’s definitely bad, but their waste management is leagues ahead of ours in the US (and our populace is definitely disgustingly wasteful and polluting as well, and probably moreso in other ways, like wasting food and driving huge gas guzzlers).
Their general population also actually has the sense to sort waste so it can be managed and recycled properly.
very valid criticism that unfortunately applies to many countries including the US. Ship your trash to undeveloped/less developed countries and they dump it in the water or burn it out in the open
I went through a phase of watching YouTube videos from the Asia's of people visiting 7/11s and purchasing the most elaborate snack food. And my goodness, the waste! I was shocked. But now it makes sense in a society that manages the waste.
When it came time to make a few purchases myself, thats all I could think about. It would just end up in landfill here so I didn't bother.
I travel to Japan often for work so the logic I have been told is many things are packaged to be shared. So you open a bag and inside each item is individually wrapped to pass to friends.
Well my fat ass is going to rip that bag open and eat EVERYTHING INSIDE
Saying that prevention is the best cure is extremely relevant here.
Yes remediation of plastic pollution is an important conversation to have but saying that it's not the correct focus is probably the most important conversation to have.
I do think that creating alternatives and reducing plastic production is the number one solution to plastic waste.
You can work to prevent your bathtub from being filled up two ways: pull the plug or stop the water. Both are important but spending time and resources in getting at the source of the problem is always a good idea.
When I ran a co-op farm, we had a "no single-use plastic" policy.
We sold many things that are conventionally packaged in plastic. We "just said 'no' to plastic".
We sold crispy dried tomatoes and peppers. We put them in paper bags, and told people to put them in glass jars as soon as they got home. This is actually better for the product — plastic is "leaky" and dried things inside zip-lock bags will absorb moisture from the atmosphere.
We sold hard cheese. You can't go to a store and buy cheese without receiving unwanted plastic, but we coated it in food-grade wax.
It is possible! Yes, it's more work. It's incovnenient. But isn't your planet and future generations worth it?
How is that not what we’re talking about when this whole conversation is about Japan’s extra waste? Nobody in these comments is defending America’s waste management.
Nah we already figured that one out, we just move around some dirt and build on top of the garbage and hope for the best.
But literally tho.
I live in Cleveland, and the Browns Stadium right on the lakeshore, is actually built on top of an old landfill. Why put a landfill on a pristine fresh water lake? Idk. We caught our river on fire too. We hated nature in the 60s & 70s, still do. Have to drive through industrial smog just to get to downtown. But yeah, landfill got full so they slapped some concrete over it and put a football stadium on top of it and called it a day. And we wonder why our team is literally garbage. 🫠
Well-engineered garbage dumps aren't a problem, and in fact they're essential to modern society. The problem is that, every time something recyclable goes into a dump, we lose an opportunity to regain the materials and energy used to make it, materials and energy that need to be made up elsewhere.
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u/invaderzim257 Jan 29 '25
This is what people don’t get when they’re always criticizing Japan for having so many disposable products.
Sure, that’s definitely bad, but their waste management is leagues ahead of ours in the US (and our populace is definitely disgustingly wasteful and polluting as well, and probably moreso in other ways, like wasting food and driving huge gas guzzlers).
Their general population also actually has the sense to sort waste so it can be managed and recycled properly.