“Every single household demanded action,” Ishii says. “They ruined the environment and risked people’s health just to make money,” says Ishii, who has turned Matsuura’s old office into a museum dedicated to one of Japan’s most successful environmental movements.Įxhibits include a wall of shredded waste, photographs of demonstrations and a banner that reads: “Give us our island back!” The names of the heads of the 549 households that took part in the campaign cover a wall, with black rosettes pinned next to the 80% who have died. Work to remove the steel panels began after officials said levels of benzene and other toxic chemicals met national safety standards. Over the next two decades, 913,000 tonnes were removed and shipped to the nearby island of Naoshima to be treated and incinerated. In 2000, residents reached a settlement with the prefectural government to clean up the waste. “The attitude in Japan at the time was that pollution of that kind shouldn’t be cleaned up, just buried and hidden from view,” Ishii says. Sympathetic politicians visited the island, and environmental groups, spurred by successful campaigns against air pollution in the 1970s and 80s, turned their sights on the dangers of industrial waste. The investigation, though, had stirred interest in the media. In 1990, local police inspected the island, stripped the firm of its operating licence and arrested Matsuura, who was given a token fine and a short suspended prison sentence. Campaigners group sat outside the prefectural government offices every day for half a year handing out flyers demanding action against Teshima Tourism and its unrepentant president, Sosuke Matsuura. Undeterred, they marched on parliament and held thousands of meetings and events. When residents complained, Maekawa accused them of being “selfish”. As the quantity of waste grew, runoff began seeping into the sea, and Teshima’s reputation as a dumping site was sealed. And there's more information about the Pacific pollution problem on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website and the Ocean Cleanup site.Aside from pulp, food waste and wood chips, Teshima Tourism started illegally dumped huge quantities of industrial waste – the shredded parts of cars, oil, PCBs and other toxic materials – all with the consent of the prefectural government. It has created an insightful and intuitive website that will track Lecomte's progress. You can also follow along on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. The Vortex Swim is sponsored by Icebreaker, a New Zealand-based outdoor apparel manufacturer that specializes in producing clothing that sheds less synthetic microfibers. While Ben is swimming, the crew is constantly monitoring and fixing our systems on board, it’s a race with the ocean." "Water-maker, solar panels, wind generators, electric engines, satellite antenna, cameras, science devices… All our equipment is put into a hard test with our unusual long term exposure to salt, water and rough conditions. The Pacific Ocean is a remote and sometimes hostile environment, the technology we have on board is key for our survival," Paul Lecomte, Project Manager of the Vortex Swim, told Forbes. "Ben is not swimming on his own, the success of our mission also relies on our support crew and several sets of equipments. And so, what I am doing is just trying to address that and get people to see what the problem is and to, hopefully, motivate and encourage people to make a difference and inspire them to make a difference in their lives, change their behavior."įrench-born long-distance swimmer Ben Lecomte training off the coast of Hawaii. "We all have to change our behavior to have an impact on the plastic ocean. It's multiple of problems that when you create them it creates a monster that we have right now," Lecomte told Forbes. "It's not one person or one country that created that problem. Because the support vessel is sailing at the pace of a swimmer, it can collect samples otherwise out of reach to scientists on regular ocean crossings. This will include: placing trackers on large items of debris to follow their movement on the ocean’s currents observing marine life – from microorganisms to large pelagic animals – as they interact with the plastic debris and filtering for microfiber samples to learn more about this type of pollution that is undetectable to the human eye but has the potential to negatively impact the health of humans and the environment. Lecomte's boat crew will collect samples each day for a range of scientific organizations to contribute to data on plastic pollution in the ocean. The 67ft support vessel has an electronic engine that is charged by solar and wind generators.
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