177
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

The country's ubiquitous convenience stores throw out huge amounts of edible food. In Tokyo, Rachel Nuwer meets the campaigners trying to change that.

Riko Morinaga, a recent high school graduate in Tokyo, normally spends her weekend nights hanging with friends. But 3 February was different. That Saturday night was Setsuban, a Japanese holiday celebrating the transition into spring. It also happens to be one of Japan's biggest food waste days.

Every year on Setsuban, stores across the country stock a holiday sushi roll called ehomaki. At the end of the night, hundreds of thousands of these rolls wind up in the garbage. "Shops always provide what customers want, which means their shelves have to always be stocked," Morinaga says. "This contributes to the food loss problem."

Based on the data Morinaga and others gathered, Rumi Ide, an independent researcher, activist and journalist who coordinated the survey, extrapolated that Japan's 55,657 convenience stores threw out 947,121 ehomaki rolls worth 700-800m yen ($4.5-5m; £3.6-4.1m). Ide published these results on the news website Yahoo Japan (unavailable in UK and Europe) to raise awareness about this hidden problem.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] tiredofsametab@kbin.run 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

My gut is that food safety rules here probably make that difficult (though I don't know for sure). They have a pretty short shelf life being raw seafood (in many cases) and are already steadily discounted as the day goes on before being tossed.

Edit: the article also mentioned things like Christmas cake that do last longer but can't really be turned into anything else. I bought a Christmas cake a day or two after once

[-] xep@fedia.io 9 points 5 months ago

I always buy Christmas cake after Christmas, it's a steal.

this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2024
177 points (98.4% liked)

World News

39112 readers
947 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS