Drifting trash polluting Okinawa beaches

[unhappycamper]

Drifting trash polluting Okinawa beaches
By David Allen and Chiyomi Sumida, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, January 28, 2009

CHATAN, Okinawa — Cleaning up Okinawa’s beaches is a popular volunteer activity for Americans living here with the U.S. military.

It’s a way to show they’re good neighbors and environmentally conscientious.

Their Okinawan hosts, however, would like them to know that not all the flotsam and jetsam, all the bottles and old tires and shredded netting and glass globes have local origins.

Seaborne garbage is eating away Japan’s beaches at an alarming rate, said Hareyuki Yamaguchi, professor of environmental engineering at National Defense Academy of Japan and chairman of an Environmental Ministry study of the seashore trash problem. He’s been examining the garbage that has washed up on Japan’s shores for years and traced most of it to China, Korea and Taiwan.

And the amount has increased tenfold in the past 10 years.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60277