Kayoi Middle School in the city of Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, is surrounded by natural beauty. There are 109 students attending the school, of whom 23 girls belonging to the gardening club are also members of the school's Eco Club.

The school had an active environment program for years before the Eco Club was launched in 1997. Its students have been involved in collecting aluminum cans for recycling, for instance, and cleaning up nearby neighborhoods. Some students have also surveyed the quality of the surrounding sea water. The Eco Club began as an extension of these activities and was made part of the gardening club because beautifying the school environment was thought to be a good starting point.

During the 1997 school year, club members collected litter along nearby Ogoshi Beach several times. What's interesting about these outings is the kind of garbage that washes up on shore.

"About a fourth to a third of the items that flow in are from foreign countries," claims Yukihiro Furuta, the Kayoi Middle School teacher who supervises its Eco Club activities. "They're brought here by the Tsushima Current, which flows into Nagato from the south. You get a lot of foreign items especially in autumn and winter because of westerly winds."

In one project, Eco Club members checked which countries the items were from and created a table that was displayed at school.

Foreign garbage most frequently comes from South Korea, followed by China, Taiwan, and Singapore. A lot of plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, and candy wrappings wash up; there have also been a few large items, like a freezer for ice cream.

Besides keeping the beach clean and keeping tabs on what washes ashore, club members also regularly check the water quality at two rivers: the Fukawa and Koya. These activities were summarized in a wall newspaper, which was posted at the national Eco Club convention as the representative work of Yamaguchi Prefecture clubs.

During the remainder of the 1998 school year, the Kayoi Eco Club plans to measure how much air pollution plants absorb and study the influence of pollutants called hormone disruptors on ibonishi and other shellfish.

The students are no strangers to beautiful natural surroundings, having been brought up right next to the Sea of Japan," says club supervisor Mr. Furuta. "Even those who weren't very enthusiastic about keeping the environment clean have become quite interested in the topic as we explored environmental themes close by."

A ninth grader who will be graduating from the school in March 1999 said she hoped to persuade younger students to continue making an effort to preserve Nagato's natural surroundings.


Photos: Club members do everything from experiments to clean-up work to presentations on their activities. (Yukihiro Furuta)