On September 28, 2019, volunteers from Toray Group companies carried out the Sixth Toray Group Arakawa Clean-aid program cleaning the riverbed of Tokyo’s Arakawa River. A total of 26 volunteers including employees and their families from Toray, Toray International, Inc. (TI), Du Pont-Toray Co., Ltd. (TDC), Suido Kiko Kaisha, Ltd. (SKK), and Toyo Business Support Inc. (TYBS) participated in the event.
The Toray Group Arakawa Clean-aid is an initiative that was started in 2014 in collaboration with Arakawa Clean-aid Forum, an NPO, as part of Toray’s CSR activities. While reducing the garbage in the Arakawa riverbed is one of the objectives, we believe there is great significance in the participants, by communicating with each other, taking interest in familiar issues of nature and biodiversity conservation as well as learning how the marine plastic litter issue is a global problem.
The program this year again started with an environment lecture by Mr. Kazuyuki Imamura, Secretary General of Arakawa Clean-aid Forum, on the theme of “Thinking of the garbage in rivers and seas.” The lecture featured pictures that make one doubt their own eyes as well as a fun quiz session regarding the current situation of river and marine litter and their impact on earth’s environment and ecosystem, and both adults and children learned earnestly.
Subsequently, the group moved upstream of the river, split into four teams, and started “Picking up and researching litter.” The participants enter the details of their cleaning activities in a survey card as to what type of diverse trash they have picked up and how much. Finally they review the effort to grasp the significance of the activity and share the action plan for the future.
After about an hour of cleaning activity, a nature observation class under the theme “Learn about Arakawa’s biodiversity” was held and we learned about the importance of biodiversity conservation by taking goby fish, grapsoid crab, insects, plants, etc. that live in the river in our hands.
The program received excellent responses from the participants, who said, “The lecture held in advance was easy to understand and deepened the understanding of river and marine litter and raised interest in the issues,” “I would like as many people as possible to come and see the actual situation of Arakawa River,” and “In the natural science class, we were able to see the fish, crabs and insects that live in Arakawa River, which was a good experience as even the children enjoyed it.”
■Arakawa Clean-ad: https://cleanaid.jp
[1] Clean-aid: A coined word for clean (cleaning up) and aid (help) which refers to picking up litter and enriching nature.
