Japanese food and beverage companies will stop using disposable plastic one after another. As plastic waste has been cited as the main cause of maritime pollution, the country’s companies are taking the lead to stop it.
According to the Nikkei Asian Review, Skylark Holdings, which operates Japan’s largest family restaurant chain including Gusto, will stop using plastic containers for packaging and delivery starting next month.
Biodegradable plastic bags that is more easy to recycle will replace the disposable plastic bags used in stores. The policy will be applied to more than 90 percent of 3,000 stores nationwide. After 2020, the company also plans to replace utensils such as spoons and lunch boxes with eco-friendly products.
Skylark predicted that the move might reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent from the current level.
Biodegradable plastics are more expensive than conventional plastics. It’s more than twice the price of regular plastic bags. Therefore Skylark’s replacement with biodegradable plastic bags would cost millions of dollars.
Skylark said in an announcement that it is participating in reducing plastic as the plastic waste disposal problem is serious in the world. It said:
“We will also change other items used in the store to eco-friendly materials in the future.”
Japanese food and beverages companies, one of the world’s biggest plastic users
Beverage company Suntory Holdings has set a goal of using recyclable bottle by 2030. Instead of plastic bottles, they use vegetable ingredients to turn them into recyclable bottles. Suntory sells beverages with water and tea in plastic bottles in more than 50 countries. The use of plastic bottles is around 10 billion bottles a year.
The current plastic bottle contains a 10 percent recyclable pet (PET). Suntory plans to raise the percentage of pet recycling to 60-70 percent by 2030. And cover the rest with recycled vegetable resin. Vegetable resin is made from the residue of sugarcane left after sugar production.
To that end, Santori might make an investment worth about 50 billion yen in partnership with Anellotech, a New York-based bio-chemical startup, to build a new plant in the U.S. The blueprint is to produce eco-friendly bottles at the factory in 2023 and to sell beverages in bottles made from 100 percent vegetable ingredients by 2024.
Multinational beverage companies are also joining the effort to reduce plastic waste and increase recycling. Starbucks will ban the use of plastic straws in stores around the world until 2020.
Currently, Starbucks in Japan alone use 200 million straws annually. Coca-Cola will replace 50 percent of its bottles with recycled materials by 2030. Pepsi will halve the use of recycled pet bottles in Europe by 2030.
