Discussing Plastic Bags in Japan

Japan loves giving out plastic bags. You can go buy the smallest ice-cream bar from the convenience store that you will obviously be eating immediately, and the clerk will kindly hand it over in a little plastic bag. One big reason is that Japan does not have many garbage cans installed, so these plastic bags are for you to keep your garbage in so you can easily bring it home and throw it away there.

The gesture is really nice and it is, from my perspective, one of the reasons how Japan is kept to be so clean. But if we think about how many extra bags are being thrown out just for each little piece of garbage, that is a lot of plastic we are tossing out unnecessarily.

I have realized that supermarkets have been taking steps to fight against the usages of plastic bags. Since a few years ago, some supermarkets provide a little monetary incentive to those who do not need bags. In the Kanto area, many supermarkets will give you a 2-yen discount if you skip the bags, which I think is a good but tiny amount to support the movement.

In the Chubu area, from what I have seen, they actually go the other way and charge customers for the bags. Often they are 3 yen or 5 yen, but depending on the size, they could be up to 10 yen for a plastic bag. Well, I have three problems with this approach.

1)    This leaves a bad taste in my mouth at the end of the shopping experience.
2)    They are obviously overcharging for the bags.
3)    And my biggest issue, some places, to justify them charging you 3 to 5 yen for a bag, actually give you plastic bags that are thicker than what they used to provide for free, which actually wastes more material and defeats the point.

With either approach, I do believe that a big part of it is a business decision. If giving you the incentive of 2 yen saves them the manpower and storage space to stock and prepare bags, plus it shortens the time at the cashier, the supermarket would of course be in favour of doing it, in addition to the environmental reasons.

So what do I do? Well, I try to bring my shopping bags with me if I am heading out from home for my grocery shopping. However, I often stop by the supermarket on my way home from work, so I always make sure I have a couple of rolled up plastic bags in my work bag. They are light and compact, and I can simply pull them out to bag my groceries. Upon going on, I fold the same bags and return them into my bags, so each plastic bag gets reused about 5 to 10 times before I turn them into a garbage bag. Thankfully I am not in one of those cities where I must purchase designated garbage bags.

I have a belief that decreasing the wasting of plastic bags is one of the easiest things that everyone can contribute to on a daily basis, and even if it is one bag a day, it makes a difference.