<story><title>India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports</title><url>https://thewire.in/environment/india-solid-plastic-import-banned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>torgian</author><text>Nothing perturbs me more than the whole plastic problem we have.&lt;p&gt;China and India&amp;#x27;s plastic and garbage pollution is one thing, but Japan is the place that irks me the most when it comes to plastic use.&lt;p&gt;I bought bananas that were wrapped in plastic (go figure, right? ) And what did the cashier do? She wrapped it in more plastic! THEN she gave me a plastic bag to put it in!&lt;p&gt;That blew my mind. Like, why? Just _why_?&lt;p&gt;Go to any supermarket in Japan and you&amp;#x27;ll see fruit and vegetables wrapped in plastic for no good reason at all. It&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons I typically buy my produce from the local farmers instead of the market now.&lt;p&gt;I mean, why would you _individually_ _wrap_ oranges?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>titzer</author><text>They are wrapped in plastic so they can source them from even farther away, where it&amp;#x27;s is even cheaper. So the entire supply chain gets longer and less efficient (pollution, energy, and sustainability-wise) because it is cheaper for producers. In short, more profit. This is capitalism.</text></comment>
<story><title>India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports</title><url>https://thewire.in/environment/india-solid-plastic-import-banned</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>torgian</author><text>Nothing perturbs me more than the whole plastic problem we have.&lt;p&gt;China and India&amp;#x27;s plastic and garbage pollution is one thing, but Japan is the place that irks me the most when it comes to plastic use.&lt;p&gt;I bought bananas that were wrapped in plastic (go figure, right? ) And what did the cashier do? She wrapped it in more plastic! THEN she gave me a plastic bag to put it in!&lt;p&gt;That blew my mind. Like, why? Just _why_?&lt;p&gt;Go to any supermarket in Japan and you&amp;#x27;ll see fruit and vegetables wrapped in plastic for no good reason at all. It&amp;#x27;s one of the reasons I typically buy my produce from the local farmers instead of the market now.&lt;p&gt;I mean, why would you _individually_ _wrap_ oranges?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jor-el</author><text>Its very much same in Singapore as well. In supermarket, more often than not, cashier puts one item in one plastic bag, so if you are buying a weeks grocery, you easily get 10-12 plastic bags just like that. The vegetables are pre-packed covered with plastic. Some fruits are packed with another harder plastic - apart from the laminated plastic. And the thing that bothered me the most is during chinese new year, each mandarin is covered in plastic individually. Why do you want to cover each mandarin, for a fruit which already has a thick peel!!&lt;p&gt;With developed countries, with all educated residents, are finding hard to curb plastic use (or lack of effort), it looks humanity is still some distance away to make a serious dent to use of plastic overall.</text></comment>