Tag - waste

 
 

WASTE

Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
May 22, 2019
Malaysia, flooded with plastic waste, to send scrap back to source
Malaysia, which has become the dumping ground for the world's plastic waste, will send back nonrecyclable plastic scrap to the developed countries that sent it there, its environment minister said on Tuesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 17, 2019
Japan to ask municipalities to dispose of industrial plastic waste as trash piles up due to China ban
Municipalities that accept the request will pass on the costs for incineration to companies generating industrial plastic.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
May 16, 2019
Philippines withdraws top diplomats from Canada in dispute over exported waste
The Philippines is withdrawing top diplomats from Canada after Ottawa missed a deadline to take back 69 shipping containers full of trash, the latest move in a long-running row stoked by threats from Manila's outspoken president.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 14, 2019
Pathways to tackling the plastic waste problem
The plastic waste scourge is seriously imperiling the world's environmental well-being, including contaminating our freshwater and food chain.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
May 14, 2019
Trash found littering Mariana Trench floor in deepest-ever sub dive
On the deepest dive ever made by a human inside a submarine, a Texas investor found something he could have found in the gutter of nearly any street in the world: trash.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 4, 2019
Talking trash: The sport of collecting as much waste as possible
Thanks to Netflix, many are familiar with Japanese clutter-buster Marie Kondo and her soothing remedies for the melancholy brought on by conspicuous consumption. Kondo is already a superstar in Japan, where closet sizes barely keep up with snowballing affluence, but she wasn't the first in her field,...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 3, 2019
No silver bullet for China's plastics problem
The country could make biodegradable products mainstream, but that won't stop its trash from choking the oceans.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 8, 2019
Awash with plastic bottles and lacking a law, Kenya struggles to recycle with help from Coca-Cola and Unilever
As global concern over plastic pollution rises, corporate giants such as Coca-Cola and Unilever are pumping cash into a recycling initiative in Kenya they hope will provide a model for other developing countries.
EDITORIALS
Feb 26, 2019
Cuts to usage of single-use plastics gain urgency
On a per-capita basis Japan is second only to the U.S. in the annual output of plastic waste.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Beyond Tokyo
Feb 24, 2019
As the world drowns in plastic, Kameoka in Kyoto and other cities across Japan fight back
Plastic pollution in the ocean has become one of the world's most urgent environmental problems. Footage of vast fields of floating plastic debris between California and Hawaii — now commonly known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — have driven home the gravity of the problem, with scientists and...
WORLD
Feb 18, 2019
U.K. plans new tax to boost recycled plastic content and get producers to pay for waste disposal
Britain is to set out plans to overhaul its recycling system on Monday, including making producers of plastic packaging pay the full cost of dealing with their waste and introducing a deposit return scheme for cans and bottles.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2019
Tepco to deploy robot for first contact with melted fuel from Fukushima No. 1 nuclear disaster
The owner of the wrecked Fukushima No. 1 power plant is trying this week to touch melted fuel at the bottom of the plant for the first time since the disaster almost eight years ago, a tiny but key step toward retrieving the radioactive material amid a ¥21.5 trillion ($195 billion) cleanup effort.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Science & Health
Feb 8, 2019
Startup's 'water from air' project aims to turn back Thailand's tide of plastic
Staying at a hotel on the Thai island of Koh Samui in 2015, Meghan Kerrigan noticed the four bottles of water she was given every day were clogging her trash can with plastic. Outside her door, Chaweng Beach was smothered in rubbish.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 1, 2019
U.S. secretly shipped Cold War-era plutonium to Nevada, raising safety fears and riling lawmakers
The U.S. government secretly shipped a large amount of deadly plutonium from a South Carolina site that produced the radioactive metal for nuclear bombs during the Cold War to Nevada, the Trump administration revealed on Wednesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / View from Osaka
Jan 20, 2019
A Japanese city plans to ban plastic shopping bags, but can it push its larger neighbors to follow suit?
International concern over the environmental damage done by the use of plastic in various forms is now the topic of political and economic discussions across the planet. Dealing with plastic waste, especially in the ocean, is one of the long-term issues that Japan has promised to address at this year's...

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’