This place looks familiar...because I have cleaned it up before!!!
Today's adventure started last night while taking the dogs for a walk. I found two coffee cans in on the side of the road and picked them up. Even in the dark I noticed more cans in the area. I decided to go back this morning to the same place with my backpack basket. I soon filled it up and had to go home to get two extra pink containers. This is some of what I found:
Nearly one hundred plastic and glass bottles & steel and aluminum cans
Plastic shopping bags
Plastic 35kg fertilizer bags
Plastic foam bath mat
Broken plastic basket
Plastic sheeting
Plastic food wrappers
Styrofoam boxes
Styrofoam food containers
Styrofoam instant ramen cups
Cardboard boxes
Rusted out steel bowl
Rusted out push cart/seat walker
Etc.
Nearly one hundred plastic and glass bottles & steel and aluminum cans
Plastic shopping bags
Plastic 35kg fertilizer bags
Plastic foam bath mat
Broken plastic basket
Plastic sheeting
Plastic food wrappers
Styrofoam boxes
Styrofoam food containers
Styrofoam instant ramen cups
Cardboard boxes
Rusted out steel bowl
Rusted out push cart/seat walker
Etc.
The deeper I descended the more garbage I found
This location is the same cemetery I visited earlier on during our Ajishima Clean Up challenge. There is a steep slope right off the edge of the road and it is covered by many low hanging branches from the surrounding trees. This is very similar to the site we cleaned up yesterday, but still hidden behind the foliage, and therefore an ideal place to dump garbage surreptitiously. I definitely found the dumping grounds of another serial litter bug. I suspect someone walks or drives by here daily and throws their plastic tea bottles or steel coffee cans down the hill because they think no one will ever see them.
There were so many layers of garbage, bottles and cans separated by topsoil and then more layers of trash very deep in the ground. I dug everything out by hand. I thought I would clean up a couple cans at the top of the hill, but the more I looked around the more I found. I ended up spending over two hours rummaging around the leaves and dirt even before I had breakfast this morning!
Once I filled my backpack basket, I quickly filled the two containers I fetched from home. Then, without fail, once one container was full I would serendipitously find another container or plastic shopping bag or plastic fertilizer bag, fill it up, and find another. There is still more garbage in the cemetery, that I was not able to pick up, because I was really hungry! I will have to go back another day or maybe even a few times.
There were so many layers of garbage, bottles and cans separated by topsoil and then more layers of trash very deep in the ground. I dug everything out by hand. I thought I would clean up a couple cans at the top of the hill, but the more I looked around the more I found. I ended up spending over two hours rummaging around the leaves and dirt even before I had breakfast this morning!
Once I filled my backpack basket, I quickly filled the two containers I fetched from home. Then, without fail, once one container was full I would serendipitously find another container or plastic shopping bag or plastic fertilizer bag, fill it up, and find another. There is still more garbage in the cemetery, that I was not able to pick up, because I was really hungry! I will have to go back another day or maybe even a few times.
These push cart/seat walker things are very popular with the island's grandmas
I have to admit a morbid thought I had once I saw this walker discarded at the bottom of the slope; judging by the way our societies treat old people like trash I would not have been surprised to find someone's poor grandma discarded along with the broken walker. And since this was in a cemetery it was even creepier.
All I did find in the cemetery were mountains of garbage; mostly plastic bottles from all the sake and shochu offered to the ancestors. One family would empty a bottle and throw it down the hill and their garbage would pile up around another family's grave. That family would do the same and toss their garbage down the hill to the next family, and so on and so forth, until the last family's refuse ended up in a small valley only to be washed out to sea by a small stream that swells in the rainy season and after snow melt.
What occurs to me, is that, if the islanders care so little about the cemetery where their ancestors are interned, a place where cultures usually show their greatest reverence, then how can we expect them to show any respect for the rest of their surroundings on the island. I think it will be very hard to influence and change this habitual dumping behavior for the better. Hard, but not impossible.
All I did find in the cemetery were mountains of garbage; mostly plastic bottles from all the sake and shochu offered to the ancestors. One family would empty a bottle and throw it down the hill and their garbage would pile up around another family's grave. That family would do the same and toss their garbage down the hill to the next family, and so on and so forth, until the last family's refuse ended up in a small valley only to be washed out to sea by a small stream that swells in the rainy season and after snow melt.
What occurs to me, is that, if the islanders care so little about the cemetery where their ancestors are interned, a place where cultures usually show their greatest reverence, then how can we expect them to show any respect for the rest of their surroundings on the island. I think it will be very hard to influence and change this habitual dumping behavior for the better. Hard, but not impossible.
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