Wasteful Packaging in Japan

It’s a cliché to say Japan is a “country of contrasts” when talking about it’s massive cities with towering architecture right next door to it’s quiet temples and beautiful scenery, but this cliché of conflicting ideas expands to many other things in Japanese life too, including it’s thoughts towards recycling and packaging. Allow me to explain.

Take for example rubbish (garbage) collection. Depending on where you live, each day has a different type of refuse assigned to it.
Where I live, Monday, Wednesday, Friday is “burnable” rubbish. Yes, that’s exactly what it sounds like. Burning is favoured over landfills these days thanks to lack of space.
Thursday is “non-burnable” which means metal things, old umbrellas and such.
Finally Saturday is “recyclable” day, which means time to get all your tin cans, plastic bottles, paper and glass into different bags and put them out for collection. Don’t forget to bundle them together neatly, including all your old magazines, comics and newspapers.

This system of separating and recycling different materials expands to every rubbish bin (garbage can) in Japan, be it at a convenience store or train station.
The image you may have walking around Japan is, damn - these guys take their waste and recycling really seriously!

Well before you go comparing Japan to Germany or another super-green friendly European country, let’s just look at the other side of it.

I think this is best explained with the aid of some photos, take a look at this box of sweet potato treats I got as a souvenir from a Japanese friend:

That box you see was wrapped in paper first. (I left a little bit there just for reference)

When you finally open it you are greeted with this:

All the sweets are on a plastic tray, which is in itself wrapped in a plastic bag. There is also a small sachet of anti-moisture gel in there. (Pretty standard in Japanese food products)

But that’s not it!!

Once you ripped open the plastic bag, now every single individual sweet is wrapped in another smaller packet!

Such a massive amount of waste for a pathetically small amount of sweets.

I think this demonstrates the irony of how the Japanese people use and recycle materials….
None of the materials used in that sweet box were recycled, although I guess you could reuse the box for something.

As only plastic bottles or containers can be collected for recycling, all of what you saw had to be thrown in the “burnable” bin.
I used this as an example because the same wastage can be found daily in Japanese products, mostly in the name of presenting something nicely.

Go to a takeaway place on a rainy day, they’ll put your food in individual bags, then put those in a paper bag, finally they’ll cover it up with a large plastic bag to protect it from the rain. That’s all without asking for it!
(Eco-tip: say “fukurou iranai desu” – I don't need a bag)

The same goes for the convenience store, go and buy a bottle of water and watch in horror as the attendant puts it in a small plastic bag! Why?!!
Even when you refuse a bag, you will always get a store “seal” (sticky tape with the logo on) to prove you’ve bought it. Why do I need this when I’ve got the receipt? Add up all that tape and that’s the same as another massive batch of plastic bags.

Maybe that is Japan’s conflict of interest, that they want to recycle, but at the same time they also want to make sure everything looks identical and perfect no matter how much a product has been thrown around or left on a shelf for too long.

Final Word
If you come from a relatively “green” country that recycles everything and cuts down on packaging (like Germany) you may be in for a shock when you come to Japan!
Even typically wasteful countries like the UK are cutting down on things like excess packaging, no such things are going on in Japan yet.
Whereas some things are recycled here in Japan, so much is wasted in the name of making things look presentable, which in my eyes cancels out all the good that the recycling may have done.
Lose the excess plastic wrappers please and stop forcing people to throw so much extra crap away – it’s not helping anyone.
VERDICT: LOW POINT

“Been there, done that tip”:
I have an inside tip for opening Japanese products. In western countries we grab each side of a wrapper and pull it open, try that on a Japanese chocolate (candy) bar and it won’t work – the glue is so strong you’ll rip your nail off your finger!
Instead look for the small pre-cut tear on the side and rip it off from there – easy when you know how!