Plastic Waste and Toxic Sludge: A Sweep of a Messy Beat

Times Insider|Plastic Waste and Toxic Sludge: A Sweep of a Messy Beat

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On March 11, 2011, a 9-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Honshu, Japan, setting off a catastrophic chain of events: The quake caused a tsunami, which in turn caused the Fukushima disaster, one of the worst nuclear disasters in history. In total, about 19,000 people died.

The day after the tsunami hit, Hiroko Tabuchi, then a reporter for the Business desk of The New York Times, pleaded with her editor. “I remember crying on the phone with her, saying ‘Please let me go to the tsunami zone,’” Ms. Tabuchi said in an interview.

Instead, her editor suggested she stay in Tokyo, sensing that there might be a bigger story to cover: the nuclear fallout from the power plant in Fukushima. Covering the disaster became a turning point in Ms. Tabuchi’s career. “It was my introduction to writing about climate, with the disaster so entwined with environmental pollution and climate change,” she said.

In 2014, Ms. Tabuchi joined The Times’s Climate desk, focusing her coverage on policy. She took on a new, messier beat this summer: pollution. In recent months, she has written about “forever chemicals” on American farmlands and the uproar surrounding plastic packaging at Costco.

In a phone conversation from her home in Manhattan, Ms. Tabuchi, who grew up in Kobe, Japan, discussed her accidental path to The Times and the challenges of deciphering climate science. These are edited excerpts.

Did you always want to be a reporter?

I never wanted to be a journalist. I studied international relations in college, and my dream was to work for the United Nations or UNICEF. After college, I ended up working for this Japanese governmental agency, the Japan External Trade Organization. It was a tough adjustment. I wasn’t used to traditional office culture in Japan. The stories about its work culture are true: If you’re a first-year female in an office, you serve everyone tea.