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| "The Secret Behind
Cheap Stuff" |
Yu Tanaka continued his series of lectures on Peace
Boat with "The Secret Behind Cheap Stuff," a sharp examination of
the recent influx of bargain-priced merchandise available in Japan.
Tanaka began by describing the conditions which produce the often
shockingly low- priced products found in Japan today, including those
that stock the shelves of the famous "100 yen shops." The vast majority
of such products are manufactured in China, where factory workers
make wages which are just two percent of their Japanese counterparts.
Also in China, many factories which produce famous name-brand goods
have only enough demand to stay open for nine months out of the year,
and are often idle for the remainder. Recently factory owners have
realized that by selling their products without brand names and at
lower quality, they can keep their factories running and squeeze a
profit out of even rock-bottom prices. Another factor are large, nationwide
chain stores such as Walmart in America, which can force prices lower
by leveraging their massive buying power.
Tanaka then drew a surprising parallel between such pricing and environmental
concerns. Such pricing, he said, is quickly making recycling irrelevant,
because recycled goods cannot compete economically with new goods
produced often using environmentally destructive and exploitative
methods in lesser developed countries. Recycling efforts in Japan,
which rely largely on ordinary citizens to gather goods and trade
them in for cash, have become almost entirely a thing of the past.
Once a productive way for baseball teams and Boy Scout groups to raise
money, prices have fallen to the extent that it is no longer worth
the effort. One kilogram of recycled aluminium in Japan used to bring
in 130 yen (about one US dollar); recently the price has fallen to
just 30 yen.
He used as another example the poverty-stricken trash gatherers at
a large landfill in Thailand, who gather trash not out of any concern
for the environment but just to survive, and how they can no longer
make even the meager money needed to survive due the plummeting prices
of recycled goods.
Tanaka ended his lecture with a convincing summation, arguing that
environmentally and eventually even economically, it makes more sense
to stay away from the 100 yen shops. |
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| Shingapore-Mombasa
/ Peace Boat's 36th Voyage |
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PEACE BOAT is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. |
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