Fame And The Rubbish Solution
This morning on the national news there was a feature covering the introduction of charging to dispose waste. Our city is not the first to impose a levy, but it has difficulties with the amount of non-burnable waste that was amassed prior to the deadline (sorry no pic). From the start of the month, householders here, now have to purchase special bags. Blue for burnable and orange for the non burnable, stickers for those unwieldy items. I expect it to be similar for businesses.
My interpretation of the figures is it would seem, the more sparsely populated regions and less affluent regions receive the brunt.
|
Region/City |
|
￥/40L Bag |
|
Hokkaido |
|
120 |
|
Yonago |
|
60 |
|
Kyoto |
|
45 |
|
Tokyo |
|
0 |
Rather than ramble on about what should be done, here is a picture of some foodstuffs found around the house.
Although not the best (or worst) examples, here we have some instant noodles which inside the polystyrene bowl, can contain several seperate flavourings and additions. Chocolate and butter with an extra cardboard sleeve, the chocolate being wrapped in plastic foil sits on a card tray. Some individually wrapped confectionaries and some beer, which is more steel than beer. Some more chocolate a little too dressed up. I should have included some black teabags - I can’t find any that don’t have their own little packet, string and tag.
In a country where cement is king, I expect it’s not only aesthetics are going to suffer further from fly-tipping (illegal dumping). But when has the environment been a concern?
I thought supermarkets would start charging for plastic bags (5 yen per bag) from this week, but I haven’t noticed any change. At one fancy place near us where I go to buy speciality items like Cranberry Juice I practically have to arm wrestle the clerk to keep her from putting bubble wrap around pickle jars and extra bags around camembert cheese (to keep it from smelling up one’s cloth bag? I don’t know what that one’s all about!). Out of the many shops near us, only Coop and a tiny local shop encourage the use of cloth bags.
Comment by Nishikata Mama — April 3, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
Most times I pass a convenience store, there is a least one empty car with the engine running. I expect this isn’t the case in Tokyo, but the change in attitude is for a different reason.
Being foreign here attracts undue attention and carrying a bag for shopping seems to increase the appeal to security guards. Perhaps I’m paranoid or perhaps I look shifty.
I got a similar treatment to you when buying a jar of honey. I asked them for a sticker instead of bagging it, but they insisted on the bubble wrap.
I felt more like the item in need of bubble wrap at the time.
Comment by Adekun — April 8, 2007 @ 5:41 am