There is Hope: Housewife Doesn’t Buy Into “Cool Biz,” “Eco Bags” or the Govenment Line

October 7, 2007
By Ken Worsley

I’m putting a quote here out of context, but it fits in with something I’m working on concerning appearances, marketing, empty gestures, and the urge to attach the word ‘eco’ to anything just to make people spend money on it. Just need to save it somewhere that’s searchable…

The quote is from a recent Japan Times article on garbage, so it fits right in with the marketing, though perhaps that tends to get recycled more…

Recycling has seen good progress in Japan over the past 20 years, so what kind of signal does it send to suddenly tell people to dump their plastic in the fire? And what does it say to other local governments, like the one in Yokohama, where residents now must separate their garbage into 15 different categories? The problem, as one housewife editorialized in the Asahi, is that the national government doesn’t want to take the initiative and implement policies that unify the country’s environmental and waste countermeasures. “It’s all talk,” she writes, and gestures like “cool biz” and urging people to use “eco bags” to cart their groceries home instead of plastic bags are more symbolic than practical. What’s needed is a concerted effort on the part of government and industry, but makeshift solutions are the norm.

Filed Under Japan, Marketing, Media