Great Ideas: Beach Cleanup
by greenz.jp, Tokyo, Japan on 07.24.08
(Image: Takakuku)
As the weekend approaches, I'm thinking of the beach and maybe going for a swim. The Pacific Ocean is a wonderful place to go on a steaming hot July day, on this side of it as well.
What is not so great is the trash. It was worse a decade ago, and I recently found out why. Local volunteers are making a huge effort to get people to join beach cleanup campaigns along Japan's long coastline. Japan Environmental Action Network (JEAN) was founded by three Japanese women who wanted to do something about the trash they found on their trips to the ocean, and held its first cleanup event in September 1990. JEAN also joined the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup, making Japan the fifth nation to become part of this worldwide campaign for pollution prevention. Now they help local groups hold ocean cleanups at more than 150 sites across Japan, with more than 40,000 people volunteering for annual spring and autumn campaigns.
Their motto? "Think Globally, Clean Locally"
“Our focus is to stop the trash inland, so our organization works on showing the trash found at the beach. We want to get people thinking about where trash comes from, and how to stop it,” says JEAN spokeswoman Yoshiko Ohkura to Metropolis.
JEAN has a novel idea to communicate the scope of the problem. They have created a special exhibition that can be rented, consisting of suitcases with selected items found on different beaches. One such suitcase displays trash found here in Japan, while another showcases Japanese trash that was found on Hawaiian and Midway Island beaches. In this way, they attempt to educate people that this is a global problem, where anything thrown away at home may make a long journey before it becomes someone else's trash.
National Geographics Video: Coastal Cleanup
Beach Cleanup Links:
Treehugger: Ocean Conservancy Reveals World's Only Snapshot Of Marine Trash
Treehugger: Those Burnt Out Smokin' Butts
Youtube Video: Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup
UPDATE: Long Beach 30-Minute Beach Cleanup (thanks!)
Written by Martin Frid at greenz.jp
I do beach cleanups as often as I can in Long beach, CA. I find it very rewarding. I just wish it were more than once a month.
I was recently at Cape Scott on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and I was disgusted with the amount of trash on the wilderness beaches there. Unfortunately, we were backpacking at the time, and I didn't have the carrying capcity to pack out any of the trash. There are plastics of all kinds everywhere. Candy bar wrappers, plastic bottles from around the world, large blue plastic water barrels, and more. I wish there was an easy way to clean this stuff up.
I'm hoping that when this garbage gets picked up it's then sorted through and what ever can be recycled is then recycled.