Shikokuchuo Festival Exhibition

At the Iyomishima Sports Park Gymnasium and the gymnasium square in Shikokuchuo City, Ehime Prefecture, held on Saturday, November 16th and Sunday, November 17th, 2024, the 20th Shikokuchuo City Industrial Festival was held as part of the OMNI Marine Litter Project implemented by the DLX Design Lab of the Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo. As part of this project, we held a workshop for the environmentally friendly paper bag holder "PIGRA" to promote litter picking and an exhibition of the River Litter Project. The exhibition was held at an event attended by a total of about 25,000 people.

We have been working with Shikokuchuo City, known as the "number one paper town in Japan," for about three years, and this time we spent a year planning and realizing a workshop at the industrial festival that could be delivered directly to the citizens. Since the approach to marine litter picking activities differs between urban and rural areas, it is meaningful to expand it to various regions.

Many families visited the industrial festival, and many children participated.

With the cooperation of Shikokuchuo City and Ehime Prefecture officials, we also tested a river litter pick-up tool we are currently developing, and found that there was a lot of litter near the river mouth.

Despite being busy during the election period, the officials were kind enough to help us out, and we were able to give everyone a try with all of the PIGRAs we brought with us. More than 50 parents and children participated.

We hope that this activity will continue to raise awareness of the marine litter problem.

More information about the Shikokuchuo City Industrial Festival:

Official information: https://www.city.shikokuchuo.ehime.jp/uploaded/attachment/25244.pdf

Event information: https://www.cosmos-network.jp/cosmos_blog/278640/