世論 What Japan Thinks

Recently, goo Research, in conjuction with All About, looked at young married women and ecology and lifestyle.

Demographics

Between the 3rd and 5th of July 2008 1,039 married women from the goo Research online monitor panel successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 100% of the sample was female, of course, 33.3% in their twenties, 32.6% in their thirties, and 34.1% in their forties. 38.4% were full-time employees, 11.4% contract or dispatch staff, and 50.2% were full-time housewives. I don’t know why no part-timers or students were in the sample.

A recent story from the New York Times misrepresented the situation regarding energy consumption of heated toilets, but thinking about the situation more and seeing a couple of much more efficient European products, I realised the biggest domestic energy saving that can be made with little alteration to the average Japanese person’s lifestyle is to replace the hot water pot with some of the newer types of kettle.

I was going to post something describing the relative power consumptions, but it’s really difficult to get figures for kettles in sensible units - all I got was stuff like “If everyone boiled only the water they needed to make a cup of tea instead of filling the kettle every time, we could save enough electricity in a year to power the UK’s street lights for nearly 7 months. This is the equivalent of the electricity used by 300,000 households for a year or output of a typical power station for nearly 5 months.” If these figures weren’t incomprehensible enough, it said the above would save “enough CO2 to fill Big Ben tower more than 50,000 times.”

Just how much CO2 is 50,000 Big Ben’s worth?
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This interesting recent report from Nippon Research Council, conducted in conjunction with Gallop Korea, looked into the degree of interest in environmental issues in South Korea and Japan.

Demographics

For Japan, between the 7th and 19th of November 2007 1,200 people were selected at random, weighted by region, from a database of households, and were interviewed both face to face and had questionnaires left to fill in. 50.4% of the sample were female, and the ages were distributed between 15 and 79 years old. For South Korea, between the 12th and 26th of June 2008 1,510 people were selected at random, weighted by region, sex and age, and were interviewed face to face. 50.6% of the sample were female, and the ages of those sampled were 19 or older.

I wish I knew more about South Korea to know how best to interpret the results. For instance, in Q2 only 5% of Koreans recycling their bathwater for use by their washing machines, but is this due to showering being more popular in Korea? Similarly, in Q1SQ Koreans are much more aware of fresh water pollution. Why?
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Another survey that MyVoice performed at the start of July was on environmental issues and MOTTAINAI. 12,326 members of their MyVoice monitor community successfully completed a private internet questionnaire; 54% of the sample was female, 3% in their teens, 22% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 24% in their forties, and 12% in their fifties.

MOTTAINAI, or to translate, “what a waste”, is a Japanese word cleverly adopted by Wangari Muta Maathai and her Greenbelt Movement, and clumsily, in my opinion, adopted by Japanese businesses in order to flog more tat or to appear green. It may be worth pointing out that another environmental campaign, Cool Biz, has, I fear, dropped out of the public awareness as a real measure, and has become merely lipservice towards environmentalism. One of the train companies I use during my commute, for instance, said in their fortnightly free paper that the company would be supporting Cool Biz by setting the air conditioner to 26°C in most carriages, and 27°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriages. However, it’s cold enough most mornings and evenings to give me goose-pimples in shirt sleeves, and in fact last weekend I checked an in-carriage thermometer and it was reading 20°C in the lightly air-conditioned carriage. MOTTAINAI indeed!
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