With very few natural resources of its own, Japan imports vast quantities of coal, tropical timber, plutonium, oil and natural gas; its per capita resource consumption ranks as one of the highest in the world. While the government, financial institutions and industries push for further economic growth, environmentalists are increasingly asking at what price this is to be achieved. They cite examples of uranium mining on indigenous people's sacred lands to feed Japanese nuclear reactors, the decimation of Australia's and Southeast Asia's old-growth forests to feed Japanese pulp mills and dangerously high dioxin and carbon dioxide levels.

One major by-product of any such heavily industrialized consumer society is waste , of which the country produces a staggering 440 million tons a year. Waste disposal costs the tax-payer a small fortune. Burning it releases poisonous dioxins and working out where to dump it is a logistical nightmare in such a densely populated country.

A common "solution" is to use garbage for land reclamation and landfill, often with disastrous results. One such project, completed in 1997, destroyed part of Japan's largest wetland area in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture. Fortunately, the protests surrounding Isahaya saved Japan's second-largest and most important wetland area at Fujimae near Nagoya. Despite the city authorities stating that there would be "no impact" should the area be used for garbage disposal, this time the Environment Agency stepped in with a landmark move to disapprove of the plan, which was promptly cancelled.

Japan is a technologically advanced and therefore energy-efficient country. Take, for example, production by Toyota and Honda of the "hybrid" cars which run off a more efficient, less polluting combination of electric and internal combustion motors. Furthermore, government tax incentives and subsidies supporting the use of solar power have led directly to a forty-percent growth within the industry. Nevertheless, Japan consumes an estimated 5.6 percent of the world's total energy , of which over half comes from coal, a by-product of which is carbon dioxide. Under the Kyoto protocol agreed at the 1997 meeting on climate change (COP3), Japan is required to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by six percent by the year 2010.