Country: Japan
School/ organization: Ritsumeikan Uji School, Japan
Delegation leader/ teacher: Mr. John Mackenzie
Students: Ayaka Okeda, Sayuri Ito, William Chapple, Oto Narumiya
We observed piles of litter building up in the woodlands near Tsubosaka yama castle, South of our school.
It made us upset that people would dump their waste here in such a beautiful and historically and politically significant location. The waste included car batteries, vehicle tires, computers, TVs etc as well as waste which is actively recycled by local authorities here in Japan, so this is unacceptable.
Considered what we could do to sort it out – we tried moving some but there were two main problems with this:
1. There was too much and it was too heavy for us to move.
2. A lot of the waste is not actively recycled by the local authorities.
To attack this problem, we contacted the local authority in Tsubosaka yama to see if they would help us take the waste away if we can get it out of the forest. We were apprehensive as we thought they may refuse due to costs (people are supposed to pay to have these items removed in Japan, hence the fly tipping). Luckily, they agreed to help us and we are making trips there and collaborating with them to clean up this mess.
Our concerns now are the message we send to the fly tippers – maybe they will see it as an opportunity to throw away waste illegally without incurring a waste disposal fee. Our next steps are therefore to continue to remove the waste and also to raise the awareness of the problem as well as the harmful effects on the environment.
