Japan retailers bracing for ban on free plastic bags

June 5, 2019

Tokyo, June 5 (Jiji Press)--Japanese retailers are speeding up their preparations for the planned introduction next year of a ban on the free provision of plastic shopping bags.

"It's quite short notice," an official of a major drug store chain admitted, after the Environment Ministry unveiled earlier this week its intention to impose the ban by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Still, many retailers calmly accepted the move, saying that starting to charge customers for plastic shopping bags was already viewed as established policy at a time when the government is increasing efforts to reduce the amount of plastic waste.

The focus is now on whether small retailers will be excluded from the ban.

Among retailers, convenience stores have been the biggest providers of free plastic bags, as their customers tend not to bring their own bags with them.

Bowing to public pressure to cut back plastic waste, however, convenience store operators have finally started to devise their own measures to reduce the distribution of plastic bags.

In early May, Seven & i Holdings Co. <3382> announced that its convenience store arm will cease using plastic bags by 2030 and switch to the use of paper bags.

Lawson Inc. <2651>, another convenience store chain, plans to halve the use of plastic bags.

Requiring shops to charge customers for plastic bags is expected to help accelerate such voluntary efforts by retailers.

Although there is only about a year until the Tokyo Olympics, most retailers are not worried about whether they can complete their preparations by then.

"All we have to do is simply start treating plastic bags as items for sale," said an official of a major convenience store chain. "There's nothing difficult."

Retailers, however, do have concerns about how small operators will be treated.

While the Environment Ministry is believed to be considering excluding individually-run stores and other shops operated by small firms from the ban on free plastic bags, major retailers fear that such a measure may lose them customers to smaller rivals, causing a sense of unfairness. v "It would be hard to understand the standards for drawing a line," said Hiromichi Akiba, president of Akidai, a small supermarket chain with outlets in Tokyo's Nerima and Suginami wards. "If they're going to do it (impose the ban), it would be fair to do it uniformly." Jiji Press