They have been a familiar sight at takeaway sushi shops around the world for decades but it could be the beginning of the end for fish-shaped soy sauce dispensers. South Australia will be the first place in the world to ban them under a wider ban on single-use plastics that comes into force on 1 September.
Why? I mean, they are tiny and useful and make you smile when you see one (or maybe that's just me?). What possible reason could there be to ban them?
The device known as shoyu-tai (or soy-sauce snapper in Japanese) was invented in 1954 by Teruo Watanabe, the founder of Osaka-based company Asahi Sogyo, according to a report from Japan’s Radio Kansai. It was then common for glass and ceramic containers to be used but the advent of cheap industrial plastics allowed the creation of a small polyethylene container in the shape of a fish, officially named the “Lunch Charm”.
And charming they certainly are. But they must go. Because eco-loons are soulless people.
Under South Australia’s new law, only pre-filled soy sauce containers with a lid, cap or stopper and containing less than 30ml of soy sauce will be banned. Plastic sachets will be allowed but the government hopes bulk bottles or dispensers will be used in sushi shops instead. The South Australian environment minister, Dr Susan Close, said each plastic fish container was used for just seconds but “their small size means they’re easily dropped, blown away, or washed into drains, making them a frequent component of beach and street litter”.
Must be a peculiarly Aussie thing, I've never seen one over here.
Other single-use plastic items included in the ban are plastic cutlery and expanded polystyrene food packaging, such as pre-packed instant bowl noodles.
So we'll cut down more trees to make wooden takeaway cutlery instead? Make it make sense!
Dr Nina Wootton, a marine ecologist at the University of Adelaide, said plastic sushi fish are more damaging because they could be mistaken for food by marine life. “If it hasn’t already been broken down into microplastics yet and it’s floating around in its whole form, then other organisms that eat fish that size could think it is a fish and then eat it,” Wootton said.
Amy proof this has ever happened? Surely if there was, you'd show it?
1 comment:
"Any proof this has ever happened? Surely if there was, you'd
how it? "
There you go again, blurring a good control project with facts!
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