I rarely visit Starbucks, both because the drinks are rather pricey and because of the high kcalories in my drink of choice. The exception is in the airport - I treat myself when I have to wait.
I was very interested when I read about how Starbucks Japan plans to reduce plastic waste in their stores as part of their global effort to reduce waste by 50 percent by the year 2030. In order to do this they plan to switch to environmentally friendly materials and promote reusable drink containers to reduce the number of disposable cups, lids, and cutlery.
Starbucks Japan proposed four new initiatives to reduce plastic waste.
1. Stores will serve iced beverages in glasses
2. Iced beverages will be served without a lid
3. More stores will offer reusable tumblers that can be rented
4. Cutlery will be reusable or made from 100 percent plant-derived materials
Here are the details:
From April 18th, 106 Starbucks in Japan will begin offering iced beverages in glasses for use in the store. Any customer can also request disposable cups.
Also beginning April 18th, 113 stores in Japan will start serving iced drinks in cups without plastic lids (with the exception of children's drinks), when bought for in store drinking. Plastic lids will remain for hot drinks and will also be available for customers who request them.
In some Tokyo Starbucks, stainless steel rental tumblers are available for people who order hot or cold drinks to go. I don't know what the details are about this.
Nationwide, Starbucks will offer cutlery made from 100 percent plant-derived materials to customers who order food to go and stainless steel cutlery for in store purchases.
Do you drink/eat at Starbucks? Are these initiatives in practice where you live? What do you think of these ideas?
Puppy Love - I don't really enjoy doing the outlining, but it always looks better after I do it. There is quite a bit of outlining to do on this one.
Ukrainian Embroidery - This pattern is for a bookmark, but I don't think I will make it to be a bookmark.
Sunday, I took the train to Tokyo to meet with friends and to attend the Tokyo Quilt Show. This is not the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival, that I attended for years. The pandemic was the end of that Festival. The Tokyo Quilt Show was a small show with an expensive entry fee and was quite a disappointment really. I guess I have been spoiled by the big shows.
There was one room of quilts, plus some quilts hanging in the hallway. I had already seen quite a few of the quilts at other shows, plus photos were not allowed to be taken of the competition quilts in the center of the room. The good thing about the day was meeting with Queenie and Julie, who blog at Queenie's Needlework and My Quilt Diary. Also, it was not crowded and everyone wore masks, so it seemed pretty safe.
These were the winning quilts.
Along the right side of the room were boxed displays of some previously exhibited quilts, maybe of quilting teachers. You may recognize some of these quilts if you attended other shows or saw my posts from the Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival or the Yokohama Quilt Show.
There were some hula dances as entertainment.
In the hallway were some nice quilts. I don't know why these could be photographed but not the others.
We hope to get together again soon. Maybe the Yokohama Show will be back in November.
I have been working on the handquilting of year two nearly every day. It's coming along slowly.
Year five of the temperature quilt
Week 46
March 13 - 19
68, 75, 68, 64, 66, 48, 63
I am reporting the high temperature each day. My Year Five temperature/color scheme remains the same as previous years:
100+ Brown
90-99 Red
80-89 Orange
70-79 Yellow
60-69 Green
50-59 Blue
40-49 Purple
30-39 Pink
20-29 White
You can see my finished Year One Quilt here.
After the earthquake a week and a half ago, many people are talking about how ready they are if a big disaster hits. Of course there has been a survey already. The survey was conducted by Weathernews and included 9,495 people. The survey revealed that 10% had prepared about a day's worth of food for a disaster, 42% had three days worth, 25% had supplies for a week, while 23% had made no preparations at all. The average number of days of provisions was 3.09 days.
As would be expected, people living in the area hit by the Great East Japan Earthquake eleven years ago are among those with the greatest awareness for emergency preparations. My prefecture is in the "3.25 days or more" category.
Another question asked was whether respondents knew about evacuation sites and routes to get to them in the event of a disaster. While 93% knew where to go near where they lived, only 72% knew the location closest to where they work.
I could probably be better prepared, but I do have bottled water and a good bit of canned beans and canned fish. I don't know how many days that amounts to and I don't have much variety of food. I do know where to go both from my home and my work. My workplace is very safety conscious and regularly has fire and earthquake drills.
How prepared are you?
Monday the 21st was a national holiday in Japan - Spring Equinox Day. I made plans to meet up with some friends for a walking tour. The day was a little gloomy with Mt. Fuji looking spooky.
This is the park where the walking tour began. The group was only six people with two volunteer guides.
The walking tour was outside of the park around the tea field area and was 4.5 kilometers. If the day had been clear, we would have had views of Mt. Fuji, like in the poster.
We did have some nice views.
This is a special tea field where tea for the Emperor is grown.
The black canopies can be rolled out on sunny days to prevent the growing tea from becoming bitter.
These are olive trees. I had no idea olives were grown here.
Another thing I learned on this tour is that they begin picking the tea 88 days after Setsubun.
After the walking tour, we walked around the park, which is very nice.
In addition to many steps, there are also gently sloping pathways making the park accessible to people with mobility issues.
There are several observation decks.
There is even a little shrine.
It was a good day to spend with friends.
