The Usual Suspects
Where do I even begin? Today I had some special help, but up first: our biggest haul to date. The two blue and two pink baskets are previous rescues from the dump, everything else came from the tiny space in front of the trees in this picture.
Bottles and cans (including our old friend, the pull tab can, buried deep in the soil)
Clocks, many and assorted
Three rusted out galvanized steel buckets
Yellow plastic basket
Re-freezable ice packs
Gas range / cook top stove (I collected some stoves from this very spot last year!)
Many square meters of plastic sheeting
Literally thousands of square meters of old fishing nets
Broken plastic buckets
Styrofoam
A piggy bank (no coinage inside, though!)
Scrub brushes
Plastic shopping bags
Plastic food wrappers
Full shaving cream can
Hairspray can
Bleach bottles
Fluorescent light bulbs (intact)
Camp stove fuel canisters
Plastic and metal broom handle
Plastic flower pots
One massive spool of unused barbed wire
Two battery operated kerosene fuel pumps (both with corroded, leaking batteries)
Etc...
Bottles and cans (including our old friend, the pull tab can, buried deep in the soil)
Clocks, many and assorted
Three rusted out galvanized steel buckets
Yellow plastic basket
Re-freezable ice packs
Gas range / cook top stove (I collected some stoves from this very spot last year!)
Many square meters of plastic sheeting
Literally thousands of square meters of old fishing nets
Broken plastic buckets
Styrofoam
A piggy bank (no coinage inside, though!)
Scrub brushes
Plastic shopping bags
Plastic food wrappers
Full shaving cream can
Hairspray can
Bleach bottles
Fluorescent light bulbs (intact)
Camp stove fuel canisters
Plastic and metal broom handle
Plastic flower pots
One massive spool of unused barbed wire
Two battery operated kerosene fuel pumps (both with corroded, leaking batteries)
Etc...
I spy with my little eye, something...garbage
My special helpers today included Michie and two reporters from the 'Nikkei' (日本経済新聞) newspaper of Japan. They randomly came across our Ajishima Clean Up challenge on FirstGiving, and contacted us to learn some more about our vision for an ecovillage on Ajishima, especially in regards to the disaster recovery effort in the Tohoku region. One of the reporters has visited the island many times in the past. I will post a link to their report once it is published. We are really excited about the possible exposure this will help generate, and very grateful for the opportunity to have been able to talk about our plans with them.
Anyway, back to the clean up...We spent just under 30 minutes on the slight slope and space in front of the trees. We did not even get a fraction of the junk dumped here. We ran out of baskets to pack up, but found another basket and some buckets and filled them all too quickly.
This space is on the corner of a t-intersection of two narrow back roads. It was covered by dozens of low hanging branches and loads of weeds, until someone cut all of the lowest branches down last summer. Once the foliage was gone, it revealed an enormous pile of trash. This turned into a huge "trash magnet" as it has been added to steadily since last summer.
We have located the dumping grounds of yet another serial litter bug!
Anyway, back to the clean up...We spent just under 30 minutes on the slight slope and space in front of the trees. We did not even get a fraction of the junk dumped here. We ran out of baskets to pack up, but found another basket and some buckets and filled them all too quickly.
This space is on the corner of a t-intersection of two narrow back roads. It was covered by dozens of low hanging branches and loads of weeds, until someone cut all of the lowest branches down last summer. Once the foliage was gone, it revealed an enormous pile of trash. This turned into a huge "trash magnet" as it has been added to steadily since last summer.
We have located the dumping grounds of yet another serial litter bug!
We're gonna need a bigger boat!
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