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The crisis in Japan’s love affair with plastic
Knock-on effects of the Strait of Hormuz’s closure are becoming a source of economic consternation.
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A commodity crisis will challenge Japan’s boundless predilection for packaging, and test the societal stickiness of plastic, the concept of wastefulness and what has long been one of the country’s signature addictions.
PHOTO: AFP
Leo Lewis
Early on in a lot of disaster films, we are set up for thrills when ordinary folk encounter various unsettling – but not yet truly terrifying – phenomena. Japan is still very much in the “missing geologists” and “inexplicably huge paw prints” phase of its 2026 commodity crisis.
The next phase, should it arrive, will challenge Japan’s boundless predilection for packaging, and test the societal stickiness of plastic, the concept of wastefulness and what has long been one of the country’s signature addictions.
