Beginning September 1, South Australia will become the first jurisdiction in the world to ban plastic sushi fish. These colorful plastic pieces — known in official circles as “Lunch Charm” — will soon be banned. This decision is part of a larger effort to ban single-use plastics throughout the region. The ruling aims to address the environmental damage caused by these widespread plastic products. Marine animals often mistake them for food, with fatal results.
Dr. Nina Wootton, a marine ecologist at the University of Adelaide, emphasizes the dangers posed by these plastic sushi fish. Watch as she details how their likeness to actual fish can have fatal results for 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,” she said.
Teruo Watanabe, creator of the plastic sushi fish (1954). In Japanese, it’s called “shoyu-tai” or “soy sauce snapper.” Since then, restaurants that offer sushi for takeaway all over the world have adopted this pretty unremarkable gimmick. Unfortunately, over the decades, billions of the suckers have made their way to market.
As for the reusable options, Dr. Susan Close, then the South Australian environment minister, highlighted how unduly inefficient they were. She highlighted that each plastic fish container has a use time of just seconds. She called attention to the fact that their diminutive size makes them prone to being lost or thrown away. “Their small size means they’re easily dropped, blown away, or washed into drains, making them a frequent component of beach and street litter,” Dr. Close noted.
Cip Hamilton, campaign manager at the Australian Marine Conservation Society, welcomed the ban as a significant step. He argues that we need to do more to really shake things up. He stated, “Bans like these are an important small step towards reducing plastic pollution but it’s important that governments start to look at reducing and removing problematic plastics across the whole system.” He commented on the degradation rate of these plastic items: “Since they are quite a thick plastic, it does take quite a while for them to degrade.”
South Australia’s incoming legislation only focuses on particular soy sauce containers. It prohibits the use of uniformed pre-filled takeaway containers that have stoppers, caps or lids and are less than 30ml of soy sauce in them, such as the infamous little plastic sushi fish. This regulation is designed to prevent at least half the volume of single-use plastic from entering the waste stream.