Al Jazeera: Foreign rubbish choking Okinawa
Japan's pristine southern beaches are being threatened by wave upon wave of foreign intruders - rubbish of all sorts from neighbouring countries. "The amount of rubbish that is building up on many of the islands in the Okinawa group is very worrying," said Hareyuki Yamaguchi, a professor at the National Defence Academy. "I cannot emphasise enough how serious the pollution problem is becoming, and that is a change I have seen in the space of less than 10 years
"Typically the rubbish that we find falls into several distinct categories: There are the styrofoam buoys, rope, fishing nets, oil drums and plastic sheeting that are from fishing boats; plastic bottles, tin cans, light bulbs and other forms of domestic rubbish - including heavy items such as TVs and refrigerators - and then hospital waste like used syringes and medicine bottles." From labels and other marks that his team have been able to identify, about 10% of the trash is Japanese and 30% is Korean. The remaining 60% bears Chinese characters, meaning it has come from Taiwan, Hong Kong or the Chinese mainland.