A funny legend has been circulating in the domestic open spaces for more than a decade: they say, Japan made a deal with the USSR to buy … broken bottles, and in huge volumes. However, the most striking thing is that after the acquisition, this glass was simply thrown into the sea. Few believed in the plausibility of this tale until its truth was confirmed. Moreover, this story is a vivid example of how the Japanese, having gone to the trick, extracted a lot of profit from this seemingly useless agreement.
The story goes that in the seventies of the last century, Japanese partners really offered the Soviet Union to conclude a deal for the sale of broken glass, which the USSR always had a lot. We considered such an agreement to be very profitable, so we immediately agreed. It was only after the deal was concluded that the Japanese got rid of the broken bottles by throwing them into the open sea. This practice is generally accepted as an inexpensive, environmentally friendly method of disposing of this type of product. Millions of fragments that the sea polished into glass pebbles, and today are thrown on the Japanese coast.
However, in reality, the meaning of the treaty for the Japanese was not to throw glass into the sea. The idea of the Asians was to get not broken bottles, but … containers from under them. The thing is that the official glass goods were packed in cedar boxes, and they were made very soundly.
And the material itself is strong and durable, only in Japan it was in short supply in those years. They tried to conclude a deal with the USSR for the supply of timber, but did not agree on the price. It was then that the Japanese decided to get the raw materials they needed in such a clever way. After the deal was completed, the Japanese dismantled the cedar boxes into planks and used them to assemble furniture.
By the way, such a deal was not the only one between Japan and the Soviet Union. For example, once an agreement was signed for the wholesale purchase of shovels, axes, blades and other tools made of steel. The idea was the same: they tried to sell the pure raw materials of the USSR at a high price, but they supplied the finished product at reasonable prices. And the Japanese then melted steel and made equipment from it, which then, most amazingly, was sold, including back to the USSR. Therefore, the ingenuity of Asians helped them even recoup at least part of the money spent on broken bottles.
In addition to the topic: Why do Arab countries buy sand in Europe when there is a whole desert around