Hiroko Tabuchi is a reporter for The New York Times writing on pollution and the environment. She focuses on pollution and environmental costs, helping readers understand environmental effects and trade-offs, particularly as humanity tries to pivot away from fossil fuels. The beat brings together the risks of pollution in the environment — whether from PFAS or other toxic chemicals — as well as the lobbying efforts for and against chemical regulations, and the scientific and technological search for solutions. She also follows the world’s growing reliance on plastics, the microplastics in our environment, and the challenges of recycling.

Tabuchi has been a journalist for more than 20 years, covering the Japanese economy from Tokyo and climate and energy from New York. She was part of a team that was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for an examination of global manufacturing giants and was a Pulitzer finalist on two other teams: one that covered the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011 and another that exposed the breadth of a political war on science in 2020. Her project using infrared technology to detect methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure won the 2020 National Press Foundation award for innovative storytelling.

She has written about the oil industry’s campaign to rewrite American car emissions rules, how Americans’ appetite for leather is worsening Amazon deforestation, and why the “chasing arrows” symbol doesn’t necessarily mean that something is recyclable.

Ms. Tabuchi grew up in Kobe, Japan. She has a degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. She speaks English, Japanese and some Chinese.

She was the co-winner of the 2020 NPF Innovative Storytelling Award along with Jonah Kessel.

2024 Thomas L. Stokes Award for Energy and Environment Journalism
Hiroko Tabuchi