As someone who grew up eating Calbee snacks, I think they’ll be fine.
People from my generation aren’t buying Calbee because the bag is colorful. They’re buying it because it’s Calbee and they already know what they’re getting. The packaging could be black and white and I’d still recognize it instantly.
The only people I could see being briefly confused are younger consumers. Japanese packaging tends to be very colorful, so we’re all conditioned to identify products partly by color. But people adapt quickly. In fact, a black-and-white Calbee bag might end up standing out more on a crowded supermarket shelf than yet another brightly colored package.
There’s also a chance this ends up being a net positive. If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same, why go back? Japanese consumers are feeling inflation more than they have in decades, and companies are under pressure too. Cutting costs in a place customers barely notice seems a lot smarter than shrinking the product or raising prices again.
> If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same
In reality packaging is a very big part of marketing. People are drawn by vivid and bright colors, which is especially relevant in the modern world where unfortunately so many of us are living in a permanent hyper-stimulated state. It's hard to ignore well-designed packaging with tastefully chosen colors even if you're someone who is mindful about their eating/consumption choices and you know that what's inside that packaging is totally different from what you see from the outside.
Absolutely. If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much once the public already knows a product well, Coca-cola could have stopped spending so much on their brand a long time ago.
If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much Coca-cola would go out of business immediately. Sugar water is cheap and simple to make. The off-brands taste just as good if not better in blind testing. The only defense they have is their brand and the amount of money they spend on marketing. Same with Red Bull.
I think you are overly optimistic and forget a few key facts here.
According to wiki, 8% of males and 0.5% of female suffer from colorblindness. That means for the rest of the people, the color is part of the information that our brain use subconsciously when we go and grab a bag of Calbee.
Will it affect the Japanese general public? Minor inconvenience for sure.
Will it affect sales? Probably for area popular by tourist? Maybe it move the needle by 1%?
But what's important that's below the fold is there could be other knock on effect as naphtha is used to make other product.
Did you actually read the article past the hero image?
> Teikoku Databank has identified 52 Japanese companies using naphtha to make basic chemical products like ethylene, synthetic rubber, and PVC resin.
> The chemicals, petroleum, and coal products manufacturing sector is most vulnerable to naphtha price rises and shortages; of the 4,700 companies in this sector, 67.2% are integrated into the naphtha supply chain.
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
May be good to edit your comment to remove the first sentence.
As a result of the Takaichi administration directing subsidies exclusively toward gasoline, oil companies have stopped prioritizing naphtha production, leading to a shortage of daily necessities. The fact that Calbee’s snack packaging has turned monochrome is a direct consequence of this. The Takaichi administration attempted to pressure Calbee into reversing this decision.
What is even more alarming is that more than half of the Japanese public supports the Takaichi administration, which is implementing such absurd policies.
Google is telling me that there were production drops in 2025, but it was (1) due to an oversupply caused by Japanese ethylene and benzene exports fell due new plants in China and an increase in cheaper exports from the US to Asian markets, and (2) domestic gasoline consumption dropping.
Everything I can find says the shortages now are due to the Iran war.
Google is not an authoritative source. If we wanted to Google it we could do that ourselves.
Try bringing a substantive argument with references to the table.
Are you saying domestic policy and financial / tax incentives do not affect local manufacturing and markets?
Because that doesn’t sound like the sort of argument any reasonable sport of person would intentionally make.
As an Australian, I’ll note they our local federal government has, and this has always been their shtick, adopted the view that they can tax the nation to prosperity. That they can incentivise our way to productivity.
In practice this has only ever resulted in a demonstration of waste and a path to misalignment incentives.
But surely top-down financial policy will work this time.
It's wider than Japan, it's in other countries in Asia. It's directly tied to the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But it's pretty clear you have your own axe to grind.
> The Takaichi administration attempted to pressure Calbee into reversing this decision.
Do you have a citation for this? This sounds insane. I can't even think of any good faith motivation for doing this, other than to cover up the shortage and to keep the public pacified.
The title reads "PM's Office calls Calbee's response a "stunt"; Emphasizes naphtha sufficiency, including intermediate products".
Asahi Shinbun is one of the established newspapers.
Also at the end (translated by google):
> "The government interviewed Calbee about the situation on the 12th. According to a government official, they explained to Calbee that there is a sufficient amount available in terms of total volume. Sources close to the Prime Minister expressed concern over the ripple effects, stating, "Calbee's reaction is an overreaction. Their announcement will cause other companies to become anxious as well." However, Calbee maintains its stance, with a public relations representative stating, "This is a measure to ensure the stable supply of our products."
So it's relatively mild "nudge", if you compare it to the current US administration.
> As a result of the Takaichi administration directing subsidies exclusively toward gasoline, oil companies have stopped prioritizing naphtha production
Not exactly. Japan only produces around 40% of it's naphtha domestically, with 40% from the Middle East and the other 20% from other sources. Much of the pain arose from supply shock for the 40% sources from the ME.
That said, much of the pain around naphata is transitional, as most Japanese imports of naphtha have now shifted away from the Middle East to Algeria, the US, and India [0][1].
Mind you, this is eating significantly into margins, but it is survivable as this isn't Japan's first black swan event of similar calibre - the late 2000s and early 2010s oil price shock occurred during a much more difficult macro environment for Japan, and at least according to ONG analysts [2] (behind login, as most actionable commodities news is) Japan has the reserves needed for around a year of production assuming Japan didn't begin shifting sourcing, which it did.
I'd recommend reading Overseas Energy Investment of Korea and Japan: How did Two East Asian Resources-Rare Industrial Giants Respond to Energy Security Challenges by Oh Seong-ik [3] to learn more about the Korean and Japanese energy security policy - both are using the same methodology, strategies, and contract structures, and despite public rhetoric, a large portion of younger Koreans targeting the Blue House and/or high finance still try to attend Waseda for their undergrad if SKY, KAIST, or Ewha doesn't work out.
The situation may stabilize over time as Japan gradually manages to shift sources.
However, the situation has been and is serious, the Calbee issue isn't really what matters of course. As someone who's currently in the process of building a new house, I'm in constant touch with my construction company, and they tell me that there are tons of procurement problems because of the naphta shortage. Some companies have stopped taking orders altogether. We're lucky in that our construction company managed to secure what we need just in time, those just a couple of weeks after us have problems. We are mostly fine, except for some stuff, which, while important, can be handled. Or delayed, at least.
How much naphtha is used to color a bag of chips? I figured it was like considerably less than a milliliter. Is that really a significant cost even if naptha prices 10x?
They had a chance to embrace the black/white medium for somethink striking and attention grabbing but looks like a bad photocopy of the original packaging.
Little sympathy for Japan. Take a page out of the USA playbook and start hauling in Russian dark ships filled with Naphtha. They have an entire naval fleet at idle while their internal needs get worse.
Naphta may sound obscure, but it's the base for a ton of products. I actually had no idea, until the building / construction companies around here started getting into serious trouble (I wrote about that in another comment).
Japan is currently undergoing an oil crisis that the government is desperately attempting to hide. Companies have been saying they don't have the supplies they need for continued operation, and some are sucking it up by cutting back on manufacturing or eating a loss out of fear of retribution from the PM or her incredibly loyal following.
Other companies have said that they're facing shortages, but if you don't read/believe the news, it's easy to ignore. Calbee is the first large corporation to make it unavoidably apparent that there are shortages, and that if things don't change, it's going to be much worse than mere ink shortages.
As a personal example, medicine that my doctor prescribed used to come in individually wrapped packs. It was like this for years. Due to plastic shortages, it's now all put into a single bag. Environmentally speaking it's better and I don't mind. But it's a massive shift and this is just the start of the shortage. With no solution in sight, and with shortage resolution taking months even if the war ended tomorrow, it's going to get worse and there's no way around it.
Buried near the end: Nisshin Seifun Welna stopped printing cooking time on their spaghetti packaging tape. There's a Japanese consumer somewhere squinting at the package trying to remember if it was 8 mins or 10 mins.
This is what "globalized supply chain" looks like up close.
Given their precarious domestic supply situation, it's been surprising they haven't chosen to lead the world on electrification of transport. China had much the same equation and have clearly gone through other way. In my recent visit, I was told in big cities buying a gasoline powdered vehicle takes months or years in permits but an electric vehicle can be bought instantly.
If they (and the rest of us for that matter) weren't burning so much of it, there'd be more left over for other uses.
(with the obvious caveat that less demand means less production, which would mean there wouldn't be a lot of surplus. But in a world where we don't burn so much oil, it probably wouldn't be worth either party closing the Strait anyway...)
>This is what "globalized supply chain" looks like up close.
If that's the extent of it I'd say they're doing relatively fine. People have been taking these events like covid as some glaring warning of globalized supply chains but given that we've had like ten major supply chain shocks in half as many years I feel like the supply chains are good actually.
If you told me ten years ago that North Koreans are fighting in Europe, Russia's oil facilities are being hit by drones, Houthis are launching rockets into space and the largest trade route in the world is blocked I'd have guessed it's worse than 4% inflation and Japan's running out of printer ink
After studying Japanese language and culture for the last 15 years, and spending about 6 months there in total, I would say they have a massive over-packaging problem in general.
I've never seen a place throw away more plastics than in Japan.
If the current oil situation forces a reworking of this system, I'd say all in all, that's an upside.
The actual canned response to this is [1] and humidity. Daily levels of humidity in East/Southeast Asia is whole another level from US/EU(or vice versa).
Even better to provide a source for each statistic.
Japan has about half the plastic waste rate, yes [1].
However, the top recycling search result claims Japan only has a 19% recycling rate compared to the US’s 24% [2], but you might have been referring to a specific recycling type?
You're greatly misunderstanding that second link: that's the breakdown of what happens to collected municipal waste within each country (notice they all add up to 100% for each country). That says nothing about total amounts of plastic waste collected or recycled.
Japan recycles about 24% of its used consumer plastics into new products, while the US recycles about 8%. That's NOT factoring in thermal recycling, which Japan is far better at than the US.
Since very few types of plastic are actually recyclable most of it ends up being burned despite being separately collected, so I don't think you can simply discount the recycled plastic from the plastic waste being produced.
Japan burns about half of its collected plastic via thermal recycling (recovering the energy) and recycles about a third into new products.
The key point is that Japan recycles 85% of its plastic waste, which is excellent compared with a country like the US that recycles about 10%. And, the per capita plastic use in the US is far more than in Japan.
This whole point pops up on the internet so frequently because tourists go to Japan and see lots of individually packaged items in supermarkets and convenience stores. Yes, there is room for improvement there, but overall the situation is not as bad as many countries and probably doesn't deserve the attention it gets.
Japan can package up all the snacks they want, they still use far less oil per capita than the USA.
Japan: Approximately 28% of all passenger kilometers are traveled by rail
United States: Rail travel accounts for only about 0.25% of passenger kilometers
Remember: when you drive your 30mpg car to work, 20 miles down the freeway, alone in your vehicle by yourself, you are burning over a gallon of refined petroleum product every single day. You can make a loooooot of plastic bags with that much oil.
Something like 95% of Americans get to work via automobile.
That’s what I’d expect for a country that imports all of its oil and a country that produces more oil than it uses, especially considering the oil importing nation is an island 1/25th the size of the oil rich country, making dense rail transportation easier.
I’d love if the US had better public transport and I could get rid of my car, it costs more per month than my housing (which is admittedly cheap)
I think the US is still a crazy outlier regardless of how much oil they produce.
They use double the oil of the entire EU despite having half the population.
Triple the usage of ASEAN despite having a little less than half the population.
Five times the usage of India despite India having four times the population.
I believe personal transportation is something like half of all oil use globally last I checked.
I don’t even think it’s about getting rid of your car entirely, it’s about a wild amount of dependence and a crazy economic incentive system where a 20mpg work truck has been the most popular vehicle in the country for decades. 100% of trips taken per week needing a car is a big consumption difference than 70% of trips taken per week needing a car.
There’s something to be said for the amount of microplastics that end up in the environment. And also that the comparison isn’t only against the US, there are other countries that lead the way in plastic reduction.
Maybe the point of the Iran war was to boost the US economy, relative to East Asia, which is dependent on Middle Eastern oil and gas, while the US is an exporter.
I mean look who benefits from this, arms companies and oil/gas companies are having a bonanza.
The point was to stop oil trades of "petro non-dollars", just like Venezuela.
If countries start getting away with selling oil in other currencies, then they wouldn't funnel back all these vasts amounts of dollars into the S&P 500 and the American economy would collapse.
And the Russian sanctions that pushed nearly all Russian oil into yuan, or the current US president telling India to trade with Russia in direct currency contracts?
Iran hasn’t been dollar denominated for decades at this point, they wish they could be! It would make their oil more valuable.
Well Iran is letting ships through if they trade in petro-non-dollars (mostly yuan) and pay a fee, and the American blockade also lets those through if they're not coming from Iran itself. At this point the cheapest oil is the oil bought in yuan. Massive own goal there.
As someone who grew up eating Calbee snacks, I think they’ll be fine.
People from my generation aren’t buying Calbee because the bag is colorful. They’re buying it because it’s Calbee and they already know what they’re getting. The packaging could be black and white and I’d still recognize it instantly.
The only people I could see being briefly confused are younger consumers. Japanese packaging tends to be very colorful, so we’re all conditioned to identify products partly by color. But people adapt quickly. In fact, a black-and-white Calbee bag might end up standing out more on a crowded supermarket shelf than yet another brightly colored package.
There’s also a chance this ends up being a net positive. If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same, why go back? Japanese consumers are feeling inflation more than they have in decades, and companies are under pressure too. Cutting costs in a place customers barely notice seems a lot smarter than shrinking the product or raising prices again.
> If simpler packaging lowers costs and sales stay the same
In reality packaging is a very big part of marketing. People are drawn by vivid and bright colors, which is especially relevant in the modern world where unfortunately so many of us are living in a permanent hyper-stimulated state. It's hard to ignore well-designed packaging with tastefully chosen colors even if you're someone who is mindful about their eating/consumption choices and you know that what's inside that packaging is totally different from what you see from the outside.
Absolutely. If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much once the public already knows a product well, Coca-cola could have stopped spending so much on their brand a long time ago.
If packaging and marketing stopped mattering so much Coca-cola would go out of business immediately. Sugar water is cheap and simple to make. The off-brands taste just as good if not better in blind testing. The only defense they have is their brand and the amount of money they spend on marketing. Same with Red Bull.
I think the dialysis supply shortage may be less of a charming quirk than the potato chip bags.
Of course there is always an advocate for every little incremental step of the deliberate chaos that the world's helmsmen have been steering into.
OBEY.
I think you are overly optimistic and forget a few key facts here.
According to wiki, 8% of males and 0.5% of female suffer from colorblindness. That means for the rest of the people, the color is part of the information that our brain use subconsciously when we go and grab a bag of Calbee.
Will it affect the Japanese general public? Minor inconvenience for sure. Will it affect sales? Probably for area popular by tourist? Maybe it move the needle by 1%?
But what's important that's below the fold is there could be other knock on effect as naphtha is used to make other product.
FYI, those 8% of males / 0.5% females stats are not about complete colorblindness, so almost all of those people use color in their life
Did you actually read the article past the hero image?
> Teikoku Databank has identified 52 Japanese companies using naphtha to make basic chemical products like ethylene, synthetic rubber, and PVC resin.
> The chemicals, petroleum, and coal products manufacturing sector is most vulnerable to naphtha price rises and shortages; of the 4,700 companies in this sector, 67.2% are integrated into the naphtha supply chain.
From the official guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
May be good to edit your comment to remove the first sentence.
I won't.
Appropriate username is appropriate.
As a result of the Takaichi administration directing subsidies exclusively toward gasoline, oil companies have stopped prioritizing naphtha production, leading to a shortage of daily necessities. The fact that Calbee’s snack packaging has turned monochrome is a direct consequence of this. The Takaichi administration attempted to pressure Calbee into reversing this decision.
What is even more alarming is that more than half of the Japanese public supports the Takaichi administration, which is implementing such absurd policies.
Google is telling me that there were production drops in 2025, but it was (1) due to an oversupply caused by Japanese ethylene and benzene exports fell due new plants in China and an increase in cheaper exports from the US to Asian markets, and (2) domestic gasoline consumption dropping.
Everything I can find says the shortages now are due to the Iran war.
> Google is telling me
Google is not an authoritative source. If we wanted to Google it we could do that ourselves.
Try bringing a substantive argument with references to the table.
Are you saying domestic policy and financial / tax incentives do not affect local manufacturing and markets?
Because that doesn’t sound like the sort of argument any reasonable sport of person would intentionally make.
As an Australian, I’ll note they our local federal government has, and this has always been their shtick, adopted the view that they can tax the nation to prosperity. That they can incentivise our way to productivity.
In practice this has only ever resulted in a demonstration of waste and a path to misalignment incentives.
But surely top-down financial policy will work this time.
They did say "everything I can find" which, while not citing references, you would also have found it you tried to Google this at all. Here's one
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/24/business/what-is-naphtha....
here's another one:
https://www.irishtimes.com/world/asia-pacific/2026/05/19/ple...
It's wider than Japan, it's in other countries in Asia. It's directly tied to the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. But it's pretty clear you have your own axe to grind.
> The Takaichi administration attempted to pressure Calbee into reversing this decision.
Do you have a citation for this? This sounds insane. I can't even think of any good faith motivation for doing this, other than to cover up the shortage and to keep the public pacified.
> https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASV5N32MVV5NUTFK005M.html
The title reads "PM's Office calls Calbee's response a "stunt"; Emphasizes naphtha sufficiency, including intermediate products".
Asahi Shinbun is one of the established newspapers.
Also at the end (translated by google):
> "The government interviewed Calbee about the situation on the 12th. According to a government official, they explained to Calbee that there is a sufficient amount available in terms of total volume. Sources close to the Prime Minister expressed concern over the ripple effects, stating, "Calbee's reaction is an overreaction. Their announcement will cause other companies to become anxious as well." However, Calbee maintains its stance, with a public relations representative stating, "This is a measure to ensure the stable supply of our products."
So it's relatively mild "nudge", if you compare it to the current US administration.
> I can't even think of any good faith motivation for doing this, other than to cover up the shortage and to keep the public pacified
Yes
> As a result of the Takaichi administration directing subsidies exclusively toward gasoline, oil companies have stopped prioritizing naphtha production
Not exactly. Japan only produces around 40% of it's naphtha domestically, with 40% from the Middle East and the other 20% from other sources. Much of the pain arose from supply shock for the 40% sources from the ME.
That said, much of the pain around naphata is transitional, as most Japanese imports of naphtha have now shifted away from the Middle East to Algeria, the US, and India [0][1].
Mind you, this is eating significantly into margins, but it is survivable as this isn't Japan's first black swan event of similar calibre - the late 2000s and early 2010s oil price shock occurred during a much more difficult macro environment for Japan, and at least according to ONG analysts [2] (behind login, as most actionable commodities news is) Japan has the reserves needed for around a year of production assuming Japan didn't begin shifting sourcing, which it did.
I'd recommend reading Overseas Energy Investment of Korea and Japan: How did Two East Asian Resources-Rare Industrial Giants Respond to Energy Security Challenges by Oh Seong-ik [3] to learn more about the Korean and Japanese energy security policy - both are using the same methodology, strategies, and contract structures, and despite public rhetoric, a large portion of younger Koreans targeting the Blue House and/or high finance still try to attend Waseda for their undergrad if SKY, KAIST, or Ewha doesn't work out.
[0] - https://asia.nikkei.com/spotlight/iran-tensions/iran-war/jap...
[1] - https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news-and-insights/latest-marke...
[2] - https://direct.argusmedia.com/newsandanalysis/article/280064...
[3] - https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-99-0285-9
The situation may stabilize over time as Japan gradually manages to shift sources. However, the situation has been and is serious, the Calbee issue isn't really what matters of course. As someone who's currently in the process of building a new house, I'm in constant touch with my construction company, and they tell me that there are tons of procurement problems because of the naphta shortage. Some companies have stopped taking orders altogether. We're lucky in that our construction company managed to secure what we need just in time, those just a couple of weeks after us have problems. We are mostly fine, except for some stuff, which, while important, can be handled. Or delayed, at least.
Absolutely, it is serious and will take months to stabilize, but this isn't the first nor the last shock like this that will arise.
The 2022 Russia-Ukraine War led to a temporary shock like this as did the Iraqi Civil War and the subsequent surge in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Life is filled with black swans and it truly sucks at the individual level, but at the macro-level this is transitionary.
Also, for the Japanese government, the housing pain is less worrisome than it's downstream impact on cracking.
> is less worrisome than it's downstream impact on cracking.
What does cracking mean in this context?
I'm not op, but he's probably referring to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)
How much naphtha is used to color a bag of chips? I figured it was like considerably less than a milliliter. Is that really a significant cost even if naptha prices 10x?
It sounds like this isn't a cost problem but a supply problem. At one point a 20% reduction in inputs has to affect some output.
Guess they'll have to use a smaller font.
the absurd policy being that they want a military and a birth rate
sooooo controversial, super right-wing right there
What is more alarming is that the American public is completely silent on their mad Emperor's antics.
This all started in the White House and we must never let them get away with it.
Why do Americans have to worry about the packaging of Japanese snack products? S&P is up 10.5% YTD
They had a chance to embrace the black/white medium for somethink striking and attention grabbing but looks like a bad photocopy of the original packaging.
Sure. They could have even taken cues from Google's Material Design, which emphasizes monochromaticity.
But Material Design is such boring dredge at this point that I think I actually prefer the lazy photocopy style that is shown instead. :)
Oh no not Material Design.
One idea is if they had a monocrome design from say the 50's use that. Or get a true artist to come up with something.
I don't know Calbee snacks. We grew up with different chemicals in this area.
BUT. I must say, the packaging looks so much better in black and white.
It makes me think it's an honest product, whatever that means. Good feeling. Put your name on it, black on white. Sell it.
Little sympathy for Japan. Take a page out of the USA playbook and start hauling in Russian dark ships filled with Naphtha. They have an entire naval fleet at idle while their internal needs get worse.
Hn has at least one article in the top 25 related to Japan every day, even about the most obscure topics.
Naphta may sound obscure, but it's the base for a ton of products. I actually had no idea, until the building / construction companies around here started getting into serious trouble (I wrote about that in another comment).
Japan is currently undergoing an oil crisis that the government is desperately attempting to hide. Companies have been saying they don't have the supplies they need for continued operation, and some are sucking it up by cutting back on manufacturing or eating a loss out of fear of retribution from the PM or her incredibly loyal following.
Other companies have said that they're facing shortages, but if you don't read/believe the news, it's easy to ignore. Calbee is the first large corporation to make it unavoidably apparent that there are shortages, and that if things don't change, it's going to be much worse than mere ink shortages.
As a personal example, medicine that my doctor prescribed used to come in individually wrapped packs. It was like this for years. Due to plastic shortages, it's now all put into a single bag. Environmentally speaking it's better and I don't mind. But it's a massive shift and this is just the start of the shortage. With no solution in sight, and with shortage resolution taking months even if the war ended tomorrow, it's going to get worse and there's no way around it.
Buried near the end: Nisshin Seifun Welna stopped printing cooking time on their spaghetti packaging tape. There's a Japanese consumer somewhere squinting at the package trying to remember if it was 8 mins or 10 mins.
This is what "globalized supply chain" looks like up close.
What is the alternative to imported fossil fuel product for a country like Japan?
Given their precarious domestic supply situation, it's been surprising they haven't chosen to lead the world on electrification of transport. China had much the same equation and have clearly gone through other way. In my recent visit, I was told in big cities buying a gasoline powdered vehicle takes months or years in permits but an electric vehicle can be bought instantly.
If they (and the rest of us for that matter) weren't burning so much of it, there'd be more left over for other uses.
(with the obvious caveat that less demand means less production, which would mean there wouldn't be a lot of surplus. But in a world where we don't burn so much oil, it probably wouldn't be worth either party closing the Strait anyway...)
Japan need to use far less of it. Their levels of waste in plastic and so on, is still ridiculously high in comparison with many places.
>This is what "globalized supply chain" looks like up close.
If that's the extent of it I'd say they're doing relatively fine. People have been taking these events like covid as some glaring warning of globalized supply chains but given that we've had like ten major supply chain shocks in half as many years I feel like the supply chains are good actually.
If you told me ten years ago that North Koreans are fighting in Europe, Russia's oil facilities are being hit by drones, Houthis are launching rockets into space and the largest trade route in the world is blocked I'd have guessed it's worse than 4% inflation and Japan's running out of printer ink
Those bags look pretty good to me no nonsense color.
My first thought was “boy, an American company could copycat this and stand out immediately in the color mess of snack aisles”
Unsurprisingly, XKCD has already contemplated this:
https://xkcd.com/993/
Very nicely factual and non-clickbait article for once.
After studying Japanese language and culture for the last 15 years, and spending about 6 months there in total, I would say they have a massive over-packaging problem in general.
I've never seen a place throw away more plastics than in Japan.
If the current oil situation forces a reworking of this system, I'd say all in all, that's an upside.
The actual canned response to this is [1] and humidity. Daily levels of humidity in East/Southeast Asia is whole another level from US/EU(or vice versa).
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glico_Morinaga_case
Japan is nowhere near the worst for plastic waste per capita, and it has very high recycling rates.
Rely more on statistics and less on personal observation.
Even better to provide a source for each statistic.
Japan has about half the plastic waste rate, yes [1].
However, the top recycling search result claims Japan only has a 19% recycling rate compared to the US’s 24% [2], but you might have been referring to a specific recycling type?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_rates_by_country
You're greatly misunderstanding that second link: that's the breakdown of what happens to collected municipal waste within each country (notice they all add up to 100% for each country). That says nothing about total amounts of plastic waste collected or recycled.
See Table 1 here and its sources:
https://circulareconomy.earth/publications/how-japan-is-usin...
Japan recycles about 24% of its used consumer plastics into new products, while the US recycles about 8%. That's NOT factoring in thermal recycling, which Japan is far better at than the US.
Thermal recycling is a classic Japanese euphemism for burning plastics. Yes, for energy, but it's still misleading
https://www.mitsui.com/solution/en/contents/solutions/circul...
>it produces CO2 and toxic substances when it is burned.
Since very few types of plastic are actually recyclable most of it ends up being burned despite being separately collected, so I don't think you can simply discount the recycled plastic from the plastic waste being produced.
Japan burns about half of its collected plastic via thermal recycling (recovering the energy) and recycles about a third into new products.
The key point is that Japan recycles 85% of its plastic waste, which is excellent compared with a country like the US that recycles about 10%. And, the per capita plastic use in the US is far more than in Japan.
This whole point pops up on the internet so frequently because tourists go to Japan and see lots of individually packaged items in supermarkets and convenience stores. Yes, there is room for improvement there, but overall the situation is not as bad as many countries and probably doesn't deserve the attention it gets.
Burning trash is recycling now?
Yes, if the resulting energy is captured:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste-to-energy
Efficient burning is far better than shipping it off to a dump in some poor country, while claiming that it'll somehow be recycled there.
Japan can package up all the snacks they want, they still use far less oil per capita than the USA.
Japan: Approximately 28% of all passenger kilometers are traveled by rail
United States: Rail travel accounts for only about 0.25% of passenger kilometers
Remember: when you drive your 30mpg car to work, 20 miles down the freeway, alone in your vehicle by yourself, you are burning over a gallon of refined petroleum product every single day. You can make a loooooot of plastic bags with that much oil.
Something like 95% of Americans get to work via automobile.
Isn't it 2/3 of a gallon plus any cold start inefficiency? But either way your point stands.
20 miles to work = 40 mile round trip.
The average American commute time is something like 20-25 minutes and if that involves highway travel, 20 miles isn’t a crazy assumption.
That’s what I’d expect for a country that imports all of its oil and a country that produces more oil than it uses, especially considering the oil importing nation is an island 1/25th the size of the oil rich country, making dense rail transportation easier.
I’d love if the US had better public transport and I could get rid of my car, it costs more per month than my housing (which is admittedly cheap)
I think the US is still a crazy outlier regardless of how much oil they produce.
They use double the oil of the entire EU despite having half the population.
Triple the usage of ASEAN despite having a little less than half the population.
Five times the usage of India despite India having four times the population.
I believe personal transportation is something like half of all oil use globally last I checked.
I don’t even think it’s about getting rid of your car entirely, it’s about a wild amount of dependence and a crazy economic incentive system where a 20mpg work truck has been the most popular vehicle in the country for decades. 100% of trips taken per week needing a car is a big consumption difference than 70% of trips taken per week needing a car.
There’s something to be said for the amount of microplastics that end up in the environment. And also that the comparison isn’t only against the US, there are other countries that lead the way in plastic reduction.
Nippon packaging
So dressed like a lover
Frigid winter day
Maybe the point of the Iran war was to boost the US economy, relative to East Asia, which is dependent on Middle Eastern oil and gas, while the US is an exporter.
I mean look who benefits from this, arms companies and oil/gas companies are having a bonanza.
The point was to stop oil trades of "petro non-dollars", just like Venezuela.
If countries start getting away with selling oil in other currencies, then they wouldn't funnel back all these vasts amounts of dollars into the S&P 500 and the American economy would collapse.
And the Russian sanctions that pushed nearly all Russian oil into yuan, or the current US president telling India to trade with Russia in direct currency contracts?
Iran hasn’t been dollar denominated for decades at this point, they wish they could be! It would make their oil more valuable.
Well Iran is letting ships through if they trade in petro-non-dollars (mostly yuan) and pay a fee, and the American blockade also lets those through if they're not coming from Iran itself. At this point the cheapest oil is the oil bought in yuan. Massive own goal there.
Or makes ROTW more resiliant. I sped up my solar, battery and EV buy because of this for example.
The panels will land in ROTW.
Do we say ‘hail corporate’ here too? Because… this feels a lot like viral marketing for whatever this brand is to me.