Geographical location
	Town of Akagi Lat. 35° 01' N Long. 132° 44' E Access from Tokyo 1 1/3 hour by plane to Izumo Airport from Izumo Airport about 3 1/3 hours by train to Akagi from Osaka about 2 2/3 hours by bullet train to Ogori Station from Ogori Station about 4 1/3 hours by train to Akagi
	Related links Shimane Prefecture Izumo Shrine (Japanese only)

The Natural Environment Volunteer Club is run by pupils attending Kijima Elementary School in the town of Akagi, Shimane Prefecture. Akagi is located near the prefectural border to Hiroshima Prefecture and the main range of the Chugoku Mountains. The club was started three years ago as an extracurricular activity, and there are now 11 members--all girls--who are in the fourth to sixth grades. The club meets every Friday.

The club asks fellow pupils to turn in used milk cartons and styrofoam trays. To get as many people as they can to take part, the club issues "recycling cards," on which contributors receive a stamp for every five cartons and trays that they bring in. At the end of the 1998 school year the club awarded the 10 people that donated the largest numbers of cartons and trays during the year. As prizes, these people were given notebooks that the club had received by trading in Green Mark stamps.

After launching this initiative, the club members began to wish they could get more people outside the school to cooperate. So in April 1999 they visited a local supermarket and asked the staff to collect styrofoam trays, since none of the stores in the school's district was doing so. Thanks to the students' efforts, the supermarket set up a tray collection box in mid-June.

In addition, the club has come up with many creative ideas for interacting with local residents. In one recent project, they made toys out of plastic bottles and gave these to a nursery school. They visited the nursery and showed the kids how to play with the toys. The preschoolers were delighted, and for the members, too, it became a memorable experience.

On July 16, the last meeting day before summer vacation, the club members transplanted 13 kenaf plants from pots to the schoolyard. They had grown these plants from seeds that last year's graduates had brought back from an Eco Club gathering in 1998. During the summer, the members regularly observed the plants' growth.

Akemi Tawara, a teacher at Kijima Elementary School who advises the club members, says, "When the kenaf plants grow tall enough, we hope to use them to make paper and to study ways to conserve natural resources."


Photos: (From top) The club got a neighborhood store to set up a recycling box; plastic-bottle toys with local preschoolers; members visit an area nursing home. (Kijima Elementary School)