New rules for recycling were posted earlier this month. The best thing is that a ton of stuff can now be recycled. The only downside is that it will require a hell of a lot more rinsing moving forward. (Bring on the peanut butter jars!) But maybe that will provide more of an incentive for me to scout out products with less packaging.
Irony of ironies. While Japan is pretty good about recycling, they are package and wrapping crazy. So when you buy a pack of rice crackers - each one is individually wrapped. Doesn't this kind of defeat the purpose?
So far I am trying to reduce packaging in Max's lunch by not buying juice and milk boxes and using reusable containers instead of baggies. My next step is to really work at carrying around my own coffee cup to avoid generating Starbucks waste.
I also need to practice saying "issho de ii desu" (literallly "all together is ok") to the cashiers at the grocery store to tell them not to put dairy items and fruits and veggies in their own little baggies. And to refuse other extraneous bags --- "fukuro wa kekko desu" (literally "bag no thank you").
2 comments:
Yup - the over-packaging thing is totally insane!!
Wow! I can only say Wow! When I think of the "recycling program" here in Cairo, which basically comes down to separating the organic food-stuffs from the rest, to make them easier to locate and consume by others, it's amazing. But in honesty, they do recycle a lot here, but not nearly enough -- hence the piles upon piles of rubbish and trash on every corner. At least they're not into overpackaging here.
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