January 15, 2025

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ENVIRONMENT

Sustainability

Plastic production is on track to triple by 2050, and microplastics have been found in air, fresh produce and even human breast milk.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Dec 1, 2024

Battle over curbing plastic output jeopardizes U.N. treaty hopes

The hoped-for treaty could be the most significant environmental protection deal since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Their trucks, sometimes driven by Someya herself, go around Tokyo collecting used cooking oil from restaurants and households.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Nov 27, 2024

Turning tempura oil into fuel: 30 years of environmental efforts by Tokyo entrepreneur

By Aiko Imaizumi

"Seeing all the used cooking oil being collected, I thought Tokyo is basically an oil field."

An employee of Trex stands with bales of used plastic, which the company recycles into decking material.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Nov 25, 2024

Can the world unite to end the plastic pollution crisis?

By Aaron Clark and Leslie Kaufman

The rising toll of plastic in the environment is impossible to ignore.

Sacks of untreated and shredded plastic waste, left unattended, collect at an inoperative recycling site in Asan, South Korea, on Nov. 19.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Nov 25, 2024

South Korea's mountain of plastic waste shows limits of recycling

By Joyce Lee

Seoul says that it recycles 73% of its plastic waste, but environmentalists say the real number is about 27%.

Rice fields in the town of Ozu, Kumamoto Prefecture. The water-filled paddies glistening under the sun is a symbol of a long-running effort to preserve the prefecture’s groundwater.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET

Nov 17, 2024

Japan's chipmaking rush pressures Kumamoto's special water supply

By Tomoko Otake

TSMC and others hope that support for existing projects and proper wastewater management can avoid undermining water development efforts lauded by the U.N.

Groove Armada’s Andy Cato at his farm in Oxfordshire, U.K.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Oct 28, 2024

How a DJ became an unlikely champion for green farming

By Charlotte Hughes-Morgan

Over the past six years, Andy Cato has built a network of more than 100 farmers in the U.K. and France to grow wheat using regenerative farming methods.

Coral growing off Indonesia's Komodo island, located in the marine rich Coral Triangle

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability

Oct 27, 2024

Report details fossil fuel threat to 'Amazon of the seas'

The Coral Triangle covers waters claimed by Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and the Solomon Islands.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

It's back to the classroom for some residents as municipal governments across the country conduct lessons to learn how to use new technologies.

Can aging Japan go digital without leaving anyone behind?

By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Site designer on why expos matter more than ever

Site designer on why expos matter more than ever

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