On February? ?21, 16 students of Kanazawa University Affiliated School for Special Needs Education (Junior High School) received Certificates of "Buds of Science" sponsored by the University of Tsukuba.
Kanazawa University Affiliated School for Special Needs Education (Junior High School) has been conducting beach cleanups since 2021 as part of their SDGs studies. During the cleanup activities, students noticed a lot of marine plastic waste on the beach. Marine plastic waste is generally thought to flow from rivers connected to the sea, but there have been no examples nationwide of studies that have actually surveyed a wide area of rivers.
This year, 16 junior high school students conducted cleanup activities in the upper, middle, and lower reaches of the Tedori River, the longest river in Ishikawa Prefecture, in order to clarify the question: "Where does marine plastic waste wash up on our shores?" and investigated what types of waste are commonly dumped there.
The results showed that plastic waste is present in similar amounts in all watersheds, but that it becomes dirtier and more broken the further downstream it goes. It was also found that the waste flows out of the estuaries where the rivers connect to the sea, and ends up on the coast as marine plastic waste.
?Three of our students will give oral presentations on the results of this survey at Japan Society of Ocean Education on March? ?9 at the University of Tokyo. This is a very valuable opportunity for the students to give oral presentations at such an academic conference, and is unprecedented in Japan. The students are looking forward to presenting what they have researched and are eagerly preparing for the presentation.
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Receiving the award certificates -
Students are happy to receive their certificates -
Students filled with joy holding their certificates
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