[smcl]

One of the things that stood out to me last time I visited Japan was how much packaging everything has, and how few bins there are around. It is cool that there's one community that values not letting things to go waste and the story itself is very cute. But "the Japanese philosophy" regarding waste to me seemed to be: produce a lot of it, and burn it.

Europe may not be much better in producing, consuming, recycling or otherwise handling waste (and could easily be worse? I don't know how to measure this) but there's a tendency in "the west" to mysticise Japan and I don't know if it's helpful to do so in general, but particularly in this case.

[tkgally]

> how few bins there are around

Rubbish bins were common in railway stations and other public places until the sarin terrorist attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, after which most were removed for security reasons. Trashcans are a bit more common now than they were in the first few years after those attacks, but they can indeed still be hard to find. Just a couple of days ago, I was surprised to spot a garbage can on the sidewalk on Omotesando. I had a used facemask in my pocket, so I dropped it in.

[smcl]

I think the lack of bins in UK stations is for a similar reason (IRA bombings during the Troubles).

[ghaff]

I've heard the same. You can find trashcans on the street in London these days but my overall perception is they're still not super-common.

[totetsu]

Yes it drive me crazy.

[imp0cat]

They actually started installing public trash bins in Osaka recently, the pedal-operated kind. See Rion Ishida's video here: https://youtu.be/Bg2OQT-g0JA?t=2129