My journey to Japan
didn’t start green.
Cheapest fare from London,
economy,
a layover in China,
twenty-three hours from Manchester.
Not a story about sustainable travel
starting at an airport.
It started with a bottle
I got wrong.
I dropped it, empty and whole,
into what I assumed was “the bin.”
My dorm manager fished it out
and showed me the process:
peel the label,
twist off the cap,
rinse the bottle,
sort each piece
into its own stream.
One bottle,
three categories,
before the bin room,
where bunbetsu
splits everything
into nine bins
on its own.
It took weeks
to understand
it wasn’t excessive,
it was precise.
A loose cap or label
is the fragment
that slips through
and ends up in a river,
polluting Life Below Water
at the hands of reckless human consumption.
I noticed the street
did the same thing,
together.
Every household’s rubbish
went out to its collection point,
the gomi shusekijo,
and a blue mesh net,
a gomi netto,
made from recycled plastic,
laid over the pile
so nothing tumbled away.
Notice how there’s no vermin.
Responsible consumption
stops being a phrase.
It’s a mesh net.
What actually changed how I travel
was realising
Japan is notorious
for almost no public bins.
You finish something.
Nowhere to put the wrapper.
I carry a reusable water bottle now,
refill it at hydration stations,
switched to a rechargeable, recyclable metro card
to stop collecting paper tickets.
Halal food isn’t always easy to find here,
so I cook most meals myself,
in my own containers,
less packaging,
less waste,
produced outside my flat
in the first place.
Reduce and Reuse.
It’s a bottle refilled all day,
home-cooked meals
instead of
7-Eleven bento boxes.
The same logic runs
through buying,
not discarding.
Need a lamp,
a rice cooker,
a jumper?
2nd STREET and Book Off
already have one,
used and ready again.
Buying secondhand
is the default here
before buying new
is an option.
Nothing feels discarded.
Just between owners.
That habit
isn’t a decision anymore.
It’s reflex.
If anything, it’s sharpened.
I call out friends
who don’t separate properly.
One contaminated bag
can throw off a whole system.
Sustainability here
isn’t a personal virtue.
It’s collective.
The gomi netto
works only
if every household
plays along.
I’m nearing the end
of the placement now,
and somewhere along the way
I stopped being a guest
in this system
and became part of it.
Sustainability here
is a societal norm,
not a target
anyone claims to have hit.
That’s what I’d call
sustainable travel:
not minimising your footprint
on arrival,
but learning a system
well enough to defend it
once the novelty wears off.
References:
1. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/goal-14-life-below-water/
2. https://www.unep.org/topics/sustainable-development-goals/why-do-sustainable-development-goals-matter/goal-12
3.https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/adm/inbound/en/life-daily-gr.html
4. https://www.city.ayase.kanagawa.jp/material/files/group/21/001.pdf
5. https://www.bookoffgroup.co.jp/en/sustainability/top-en/environment/
6. https://www.2ndstreet.jp/guide/about/reuse-history?srsltid=AfmBOoqk5AUfizM_cxoDieZusLcMSADu5QKVNIfVToIsvf5bjHwb-tOn
