Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Trash pick up

We picked up trash along the main street in my village on Sunday as Youth organization of Akiyama. The theme was “Let’s change aluminum cans for money and donate them to our community!” It was so magnificent as well as long. About 10 people attended this event.

I don’t know if your countries have a custom that is to change aluminum cans for money. In Japan, everyone can do, but almost of people I know don’t do and don’t know about this. So this attempt was fresh and interesting for us.

I wrote two sentences to put them ahead of cars with my brush. You can see two papers that my friend is holding. The left one means, “Let’s pick up trash and donate!” and the right one means, “It’s what I can do” in Japan. Another photo is the chair that had been thrown away under a bridge so we hauled it up.

Our village has two tunnels. Around them, there is a lot of trash because there are not houses at all. So we went there and picked up trash well. It was terrible. It was too much trash to pick up in one day.




After picking up, we separated aluminum cans from all of trash. I took them to a recycle company to change aluminum cans for money. The company looked like a normal house rather than a company. I got 420Yen, about 4 dollars. The money was so little but so worthy for us. We have to be careful about how to donate and what we should donate so little money to. Personally I wanted to donate our elementary school. However I think it is too little. Maybe we will put it in a collection box in a convenient store.

We went to usual bar after we finished. We ate so much food and drank so much but it was very cheep because someone had paid money for our alcohol. I don’t know who he is. Only master of the bar know him. He paid about 300 dollars. It’s very expensive and he has a big heart. I think we should perform activities more responsibly because there seem to be so many people seeing us and hoping we work well.

Even so, alcohol of 300 dollars is too much. That meant one person drank 30 dollars because there were 10 people in a bar. Don’t worry! I didn’t drink so much!

The last photo is "Teruteru Bouse". I made it in hopes of being good wheather before the day. So it is a lucky charm of wheather in Japan. Do you have such a thing in your country?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very nice to clean up your community. I'm also proud that you did not use the $ to buy your beer but are saving it for a good cause. Your group looks very nice but no one is smiling but you!

Shizuo said...

Almost people but I have never attended my trash pick up event, maybe others were so tired or so shy?

Anonymous said...

Hi Shizuo,how nice of you to clean up your neighborhood.
I recycle my cans by taking then to Lincoln Park Zoo who turns them in for money.
Most of the cans in my neighborhood are picked up by homeless people who walk the alleys and pick up any metal to make money so things do get recyled.
Judy

Anonymous said...

I am proud that I came by this activity participation.
However, I was very sorry that there was much garbage.
I hope that garbage decreases by this activity.