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Kira Arčon, 17 in Rebeka Jerina, 16
Post count: 0Due to the large amounts of waste there are emerging illegal landfills even on the Japanese islands. One of them is the island of Teshima, where has accumulated a pile which collects more than 700,000 tons of a variety waste materials. There are industrial waste such as various metals, waste oils and scraping of construction material deposited by ships since the Second World War. The area where garbage is disposed is covering approximately 80,000 m2 of entire island area (15 km2). Although in 2000 they started to take away all of this trash to a neighboring island for recycling, but up to now they managed to remove only a third. Other concerns are the high cost of production (especially marine transport), which has significantly increased in recent years. Disposing of waste is a major environmental problem because it leads to the destruction of nature. Contaminated water and waste oil are flowing into the sea and devastate marine ecosystems (aquatic life) and natural culture along the coast. As a consequence, farmers and fishermen whose livelihoods depend on fishing and fish farms are forced to terminate them. In addition, the waste may face dangerous substances (different effects of lead and other dioxide in the environment, exposure to metals) harmful to the health of the inhabitants.
In general, there is a loss of landscape / aesthetic degradation, contamination of soil and groundwater contamination and exhaustion … exposure to unknown or unclear complex risks (radiation …), other environmental diseases … the loss of traditional knowledge, culture, livelihood …
Today, however, the problem represents economic recovery. Price of waste recovery and transportation to the neighboring island amounts to about 50 billion yen.
Pile of waste on Teshima island, Japan
2017-03-28T13:05:11+00:00