Adopting plastic alternatives starts with customers

ENVIRONMENTAL sustainability has been top-of-mind globally for a while now. In line with this, the Japanese government has also recently enforced a move that requires all retailers in the country, including supermarkets and convenience stores, to charge for plastic bags from next summer.

This comes in a bid to reduce plastic consumption in Japan, where more plastic packaging waste is produced per capita than in any other nation except for the United States, according to the United Nations.

The move highlights how plastics are almost never left out of discussions concerning the environment. To an extent, solving the problem of plastic pollution is deemed one of the biggest challenges facing the world today. Globally, 360 million tonnes of new plastic are produced every year and more than 14 million tonnes of plastic waste leaks into the oceans. Less than 10 per cent of plastic is currently recycled.