Japan’s Plastic Obsession

OSAKA, Japan — Shoji Kousaka always thought of Japan as a place where people knew how to dispose of their trash.

That was before he spent a morning on a trawler last fall, shocked by the reams of soda bottles, plastic shopping bags, snack wrappers and drinking straws trapped in the nets, along with the flounder and shrimp.

“Things that weren’t supposed to be there were there,” said Mr. Kousaka, a deputy chief of the Union of Kansai Government, a federation representing the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan after Tokyo. Based on what he saw in six hours on the boat, Mr. Kousaka estimates more than 6.1 million plastic scraps and about 3 million plastic bags sit on the floor of the bay.

Given Japan’s high collection rate for plastic and its rigorous approach to recycling, Mr. Kousaka said, “I was surprised at how much trash was at the bottom of the ocean.”

The Japanese are praised for their meticulous trash collection and can be very careful about separating waste for recycling.

But plastic consumption is deeply embedded in Japanese culture, where vegetables sold in grocery stores are individually wrapped, packages are often double-bagged and ubiquitous vending machines dispense plentiful plastic bottles. The country is the world’s second-largest generator of plastic packaging waste per person, behind the United States.

While most municipalities have sophisticated collection systems — somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of used plastic wrappers, bottles and bags are collected by waste management companies and then recycled or incinerated — Japan’s Environment Ministry estimates that between 18,000 and 54,000 tons of plastic waste end up in the ocean each year.

“We’re not really tackling the source of the problem,” said Karen Raubenheimer, a lecturer at the University of Wollongong in Australia. “If you’re only talking about collection and waste management, you’re not talking about reduction of production and consumption.”

Japan’s record on marine waste is mixed; at the Group of 7 meeting in Canada last year, it did not sign a plastics charter aimed at reducing marine waste. America was the only other nation that did not sign it.

Meanwhile, developing countries are increasing their use of plastic, to improve food safety.

One day last month, Chiyoko Yamada, 72, was shopping in Osaka, her basket filled with plastic-swathed groceries. There were plastic food containers of fried soba noodles and savory pancakes, filled with individual plastic sachets for each ingredient. A carrot sheathed in plastic wrap sat at the bottom of her basket next to four spears of asparagus, also wrapped in plastic.

Ms. Yamada said, “I think all that plastic is excessive.”

‘Surprised’ at the wrappers, bags and straws in the sea.