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Skip the soy fish when eating sushi
From the container, the soy sauce, wasabi and ginger packets, chopsticks and other bits and pieces, a quick bite of sushi could end up with a pile of trash that’s headed for the ocean. But it doesn’t have to be like this! Here’s some things you can do to make a difference. Rethink, reuse, recycle To reduce waste we need to think through these steps in order. How can we rethink, reduce and redesign waste? How can we reuse? As a last resort, how can we convert waste into something valuable, like a new recycled product or compost? Skip the fish & other single-use items The little soy packets are a waste and, frankly, shouldn’t exist. The biggest way you can make a difference is to skip the fish – and stop using all single-use plastic whenever possible. Re-use Switching to reusable items will make a big difference. Ask your local sushi shop if they will let you bring your own reusable container, and take durable, washable chopsticks. If you can eat at home or the office, use a soy sauce bottle with a small dish for saucing your sushi. If you have no choice but to use single-use plastic, try to re-use it as many times as you can. You can rinse and refill the soy fish packets by squeezing them in a shallow dish. Use sustainable alternatives Where single-use items are needed, they can be substituted for compostable alternatives, like Holy Carp! our home compostable soy fish dropper. Resources for Venues If you run a sushi restaurant, reducing waste and single-use plastics will benefit your brand and keep your local community healthy. There are some simple steps you can take to reduce your footprint: Always ask if customers need any single-use items and how many they need Provide reusable items like eat-in serve-ware and sauce pourers Offer a discount to customers using reusable items Join or start a container return scheme Eliminate all excess packaging Use compostable alternatives like our Holy Carp! soy droppers. We've created a poster you can use to explain these changes to your customers. Download our poster. Our mission to stop plastic at the 'sauce' We created Light Soy to highlight the big impact of small objects on ocean plastic and encourage people to quit single-use plastic. Light Soy’s recycled ocean-bound plastic shade is making a real difference in regions most affected by plastic pollution. To date we've funded the cleanup of over 32 tonnes of ocean-bound plastic. We also created Holy Carp! The first home compostable soy sauce dropper, so you can enjoy sushi without leaving plastic in your wake.
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The big problem with little soy sauce fish packets
The iconic soy sauce fish packets used with sushi are loved around the world for their cuteness & convenience, but they are an environmental disaster that is bad for the planet and our health. It's time to drop the soy fish and opt for sustainable alternatives like our plastic-free, home compostable soy sauce dropper called Holy Carp! History The containers, called shoyu-tai (soy-sauce snapper) in Japanese, were invented in the 1950s to replace glass or ceramic bottles. They became a popular way to add a squirt of soy sauce to takeaway sushi. There are hundreds of different shapes and sizes. The problem Like plastic straws and coffee cups, the packets are a big waste! They’re used for just a few moments, then tossed. They are difficult to recycle, so they end up clogging landfills and in the ocean – sadly ironic given their shape. We estimate between 8 and 12 billion soy fish have been used since they were introduced in the 1950s. Those plastics never went 'away'. They remain in landfills or the environment, breaking down into smaller microplastics that can enter our food supply. These tiny fish are a powerful symbol of a wasteful, linear economy. Single-use plastics The tiny containers hold just a few drops of soy sauce. You might use a whole handful of them just to sauce a few piece of sushi. They’re hard to refill, so best-case they go into the trash and end up in landfill, or worst case they get tossed straight on the ground and end up in the ocean. What a waste! Hard to recycle While they are made of a recyclable plastic, polyethylene, the packets are so small they cause problems with recycling machines. To go through the machines properly, they need to be put into a larger container made of the same plastic. This means they are almost never recycled and in most cases you shouldn't put them in your recycling. Destined to drift Plastics go into drains and rivers and are carried to the ocean. They drift on ocean currents, slowly breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces until they become microplastic particles that enter our food and water supplies – polluting our bodies too. Marine Life Tragically, to birds and marine life, the packets look just like their normal food (fish!). Once ingested the plastics cause the animals to slowly and painfully starve to death. Bigger plastics can trap marine life, leaving them maimed, or slowly drowning them. All so we can have a few drops of soy sauce with our sushi. Microplastics Plastic lasts a long, long time, so packets that are used for just seconds will remain in the environment for hundreds of years exposed to sun, wind and water which break them down into microplastic particles. Microplastics have been found in our bodies, on the highest mountains, and at the deepest points of the ocean. We can do better Plastic is an amazing material – when it’s used sensibly – but so often it isn’t. We need to rethink our economy and stop waste and pollution at the source. As well as better habits, we believe that better design – of individual products and entire systems – is needed to fix plastic pollution. We need to rethink, reuse and recycle everything. Every drop counts: skip the soy fish You can make a big difference simply by refusing to use single-use products, and seeking sustainable alternatives when you can't avoid them, like our Holy Carp! soy dropper. How you can make a difference Our mission to stop plastic at the 'sauce' We created Light Soy to highlight the big impact of small objects on ocean plastic and encourage people to quit single-use plastic. Light Soy’s recycled ocean-bound plastic shade is making a real difference in regions most affected by plastic pollution. To date we've funded the cleanup of over 32 tonnes of ocean-bound plastic. We also created Holy Carp! The first home compostable soy sauce dropper, so you can enjoy sushi without leaving plastic in your wake.
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