How Japan restaurants use bamboo straws to reduce plastics?

There have been reports in Japan on the progress of "how to reduce plastics in Japan". The article mentioned, “From a cultural perspective, Japanese people attach great importance to providing high-quality customer service and daily convenience. This usually means that disposable items, such as bags, straws, food packaging, and chopsticks, are regularly distributed to many customers But many people criticized this, asking whether it is really necessary." So, what efforts is Japan making to reverse this trend? This article introduces many aspects from the convenience store plan, bottles and bags, straws, alternatives, and commercial brand concept promotion. For example, Asahi, a major Japanese beverage company, vowed to introduce unlabeled bottles for all beverages that use plastic packaging to help solve the waste plastic problem.

With regard to small items that are indispensable for restaurants, such as “straws”, there are more and more signs in 2019 that some food and beverage chains in Japan choose to use bamboo straws instead of more and more offering Paper straws like Western countries. . For example, Watami is a Japanese restaurant chain brand with 61 branches in Japan and more than 600 branches in Asia. It began to use natural processed bamboo straws. This sustainable solution is called "Take Straw" (meaning "Bamboo straws"). After use, these straws can return to the environment and degrade naturally. Unlike plastic straws that will eventually be incinerated into "combustible waste", after all, plastic pollution has become a universally recognized environmental challenge. This Japanese restaurant chain has completely eliminated the use of plastic straws. So, where do these bamboo materials come from? The article mentions two major suppliers of bamboo straws, such as Amica Terra and BALIISM.