Beach Clean-up

"Situated at the west end of Beppu Bay, Beppu is famous not only for the hot springs but as well as the beaches that stretched all the way to Oita. With abundance of beaches to be found in Beppu, beaches in Beppu often faced the "ocean debris" in form of plastic waste and other fishing equipment waste that often drifted to Beppu beaches"

Some of the senior citizens in Beppu often said that the beaches in Beppu used to be the nesting place for sea turtles. However, due to the human activities and the increase of overconsumption lifestyle, it has been hard for sea turtles to lay their eggs at Beppu beaches due to the marine waste that often drifted to the shores. In order to combat the marine waste, various beach clean up initiatives had been carried out in the past few years which involves the APU students and environmental circles. In fact, couple of professors along with their seminar students from the Environment and Development major had organized a regular beach clean up activities focusing on cleaning up Mochigahama and Matogahama beaches. However, due to various restrictions imposed to curb the COVID-19 infection, it has been difficult to organize such activities as it often attracted large number of participants.

Even with various of COVID-19 restrictions being imposed, beach clean up activities could still be found albeit not on a regular basis which is mostly self-organized by small number of students. We are confident that once the COVID-19 restrictions is being lifted, more and more beach clean up activities could be organize to combat the marine waste in Beppu thus advancing SDG Goal 13 on Climate Action and Goal 14 on Life Below Water.