Japan, as a maritime country known for amazing food, scenery, and travel routes, has an utmost reliance on the sea. A Japanese tradition is to be grateful for the generosity of the ocean, so the nation dedicates one special day every year to show its appreciation – Marine Day on 18 July.
Mr Fujio Kojima's deep affection for the ocean, and a boyhood dream of saving the environment, drove him to found Pirika, Inc. a social start-up tackling marine plastic pollution, in 2011. He was only 25 years old at the time.
Pirika, meaning beautiful in Ainu, a traditional language in the Hokkaido region of Japan, is an anti-litter smartphone application which has encouraged two million people to pick up litter in 100 countries.
Mr Kojima then created Pirika Incorporated and the non-profit organisation Pirika Association, both aiming to tackle waste problems and plastic leakage issues in Japan and around the world. Pirika has grown into a company with 50 young employees today.
Our team spoke with him recently on Zoom about his work and his many projects, such as Albatross, a microplastics research service developed domestically and internationally as one of the biggest micro-plastic research projects in Japan.
The Centre: What inspired you to create Albatross?
Many of us try to solve the problem of plastic littering, but tend to focus too much on the analysis of the current situation without offering any permanent solution for the leakage problem into the rivers and oceans.
Marine plastic classifications compiled by researchers are great in theory, but they lack practical application to tackle the problem. For instance, if researchers find the largest contributor to a country’s marine litter leakage is polyethylene products, more often than not the research results do not delve into finding the exact original products. As a result, policymakers are unsure how to move forward to stop the plastic problem. So, as a young entrepreneur, I felt the need to develop a survey method to find the exact leakage source.
How did you begin this search?
I quickly realised that to use trawling nets, I would first have to procure a boat, but renting a boat in Japan is not cheap, especially for a small company like Pirika. Boats are also harder to navigate through Japan's narrow rivers and waterways. Undeterred, I decided to build an alternative mechanism to continue this research.
To find the materials to create Albatross, with my team I looked online for fishing equipment and bought some sea scooters. They are pretty difficult to combine. To attach the Albatross device's back and front parts, we created our own contraption using a 3D printer to make sure all the parts worked in harmony.
Thus, Albatross VII was created, a cheaper and portable alternative to analysing debris surrounding bays and marinas. Looking like a fishing device, it needs only to be thrown on to the water surface, while a handler holds the rope that controls its movement. It picks up the water containing the microplastics after around three minutes. The way the machinery works is very efficient and unique compared to using a trawling net.
What happens to the waste once you have collected it?
Pirika also analyses the samples before taking action. There were times when my team had to analyse each sample by hand and separate each microplastic with tweezers.
So I decided to delegate the analysis part to a contracting company by providing training and a manual to their contractors on how to process the samples, so my team can focus on data processing and translation.
To make our work even more efficient, we asked manufacturers for all product information, especially those containing plastics, such as components, size, and thickness. Ultimately, we worked together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other local partners to keep growing or database, and helped researchers around the world accelerate the classifications of their findings.
We found two big sources of microplastics in Japan: artificial turf and plastic-coated fertiliser, based on Pirika’s 2020 microplastic survey. These two microplastics make up 40% of the total weight of microplastics found in Japan’s rivers and bays.
Our biggest achievement is to find the leakage source by conducting analysis. We found that the artificial turf and the plastic-coated fertiliser are part of the major sources of microplastics in Japan’s rivers.
I heard around 60% of farmers used plastic-coated fertiliser, so that is why the leakage was so huge, and we are proud to have found this important piece of information using our technology.
Also read: Crossing the Border Without a Passport: Where Our Plastics End Up
As a result, the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) took swift action by promising to stop using plastic-coated fertiliser by 2030. What happened next?
Eventually, local municipalities and the artificial turf industry recognised the problem, and they’re now taking action to diverge from it openly. Not only that, but we also collaborated with the artificial turf industry and developed solutions with them.
We developed a special filter to be placed on the drain adjacent to artificial turf fields, and made a manual on artificial turf maintenance with microplastic leakage prevention in mind. We also have a consulting business advising how to better manage artificial turf fields.
Takanome is an application that proposes the combination of machine learning and recording litter to effectively identify litter hotspots. We did not take the easy way to find litter hotspots. We categorised the waste type manually and kept increasing the Takanome database to recognise litter faster.
Now we are developing Takanome in a car. So, by simply driving around, we can find and analyse litter with the help of artificial intelligence and make a wide litter map.
By recording the streets using a car-held camera or a smartphone, the Takanome app can identify different types of waste. Taking a step further, we used artificial technology to develop a litter map for Japan.
Do you plan to expand this litter mapping exercise all over the world, allowing governments to target the right places to conduct their clean-up activities and monitor their effectiveness?
Yes, we already have two types of customers; one is the municipalities which need the data to clean up their city. On the other hand, we also find customers who wish to join our research by gathering data with their own company vehicles to increase their image as an environmentally-friendly company.
Do you have any more goals, such as creating a plastic distribution research network?
Yes. Most cases of marine plastic pollution come from land. The plastic distribution research networks would focus on stopping plastic leakage all over the world by observing water surfaces near land in every country to find the microplastics that could lead us to the plastic leakage source. This way, we could create solutions before the leakage happens.
Also read: Ocean Under Stress: The Insidious Effects of Microplastics on Our Coral Reef
Eco-Entrepreneur, CEO of Pirika, Inc
Japan, as a maritime country known for amazing food, scenery, and travel routes, has an utmost reliance on the sea. A Japanese tradition is to be grateful for the generosity of the ocean, so the nation dedicates one special day every year to show its appreciation – Marine Day on 18 July.
Mr Fujio Kojima's deep affection for the ocean, and a boyhood dream of saving the environment, drove him to found Pirika, Inc. a social start-up tackling marine plastic pollution, in 2011. He was only 25 years old at the time.
Pirika, meaning beautiful in Ainu, a traditional language in the Hokkaido region of Japan, is an anti-litter smartphone application which has encouraged two million people to pick up litter in 100 countries.
Mr Kojima then created Pirika Incorporated and the non-profit organisation Pirika Association, both aiming to tackle waste problems and plastic leakage issues in Japan and around the world. Pirika has grown into a company with 50 young employees today.
Our team spoke with him recently on Zoom about his work and his many projects, such as Albatross, a microplastics research service developed domestically and internationally as one of the biggest micro-plastic research projects in Japan.
The Centre: What inspired you to create Albatross?
Many of us try to solve the problem of plastic littering, but tend to focus too much on the analysis of the current situation without offering any permanent solution for the leakage problem into the rivers and oceans.
Marine plastic classifications compiled by researchers are great in theory, but they lack practical application to tackle the problem. For instance, if researchers find the largest contributor to a country’s marine litter leakage is polyethylene products, more often than not the research results do not delve into finding the exact original products. As a result, policymakers are unsure how to move forward to stop the plastic problem. So, as a young entrepreneur, I felt the need to develop a survey method to find the exact leakage source.
How did you begin this search?
I quickly realised that to use trawling nets, I would first have to procure a boat, but renting a boat in Japan is not cheap, especially for a small company like Pirika. Boats are also harder to navigate through Japan's narrow rivers and waterways. Undeterred, I decided to build an alternative mechanism to continue this research.
To find the materials to create Albatross, with my team I looked online for fishing equipment and bought some sea scooters. They are pretty difficult to combine. To attach the Albatross device's back and front parts, we created our own contraption using a 3D printer to make sure all the parts worked in harmony.
Thus, Albatross VII was created, a cheaper and portable alternative to analysing debris surrounding bays and marinas. Looking like a fishing device, it needs only to be thrown on to the water surface, while a handler holds the rope that controls its movement. It picks up the water containing the microplastics after around three minutes. The way the machinery works is very efficient and unique compared to using a trawling net.
What happens to the waste once you have collected it?
Pirika also analyses the samples before taking action. There were times when my team had to analyse each sample by hand and separate each microplastic with tweezers.
So I decided to delegate the analysis part to a contracting company by providing training and a manual to their contractors on how to process the samples, so my team can focus on data processing and translation.
To make our work even more efficient, we asked manufacturers for all product information, especially those containing plastics, such as components, size, and thickness. Ultimately, we worked together with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and other local partners to keep growing or database, and helped researchers around the world accelerate the classifications of their findings.
We found two big sources of microplastics in Japan: artificial turf and plastic-coated fertiliser, based on Pirika’s 2020 microplastic survey. These two microplastics make up 40% of the total weight of microplastics found in Japan’s rivers and bays.
Our biggest achievement is to find the leakage source by conducting analysis. We found that the artificial turf and the plastic-coated fertiliser are part of the major sources of microplastics in Japan’s rivers.
I heard around 60% of farmers used plastic-coated fertiliser, so that is why the leakage was so huge, and we are proud to have found this important piece of information using our technology.
Also read: Crossing the Border Without a Passport: Where Our Plastics End Up
As a result, the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA) took swift action by promising to stop using plastic-coated fertiliser by 2030. What happened next?
Eventually, local municipalities and the artificial turf industry recognised the problem, and they’re now taking action to diverge from it openly. Not only that, but we also collaborated with the artificial turf industry and developed solutions with them.
We developed a special filter to be placed on the drain adjacent to artificial turf fields, and made a manual on artificial turf maintenance with microplastic leakage prevention in mind. We also have a consulting business advising how to better manage artificial turf fields.
Takanome is an application that proposes the combination of machine learning and recording litter to effectively identify litter hotspots. We did not take the easy way to find litter hotspots. We categorised the waste type manually and kept increasing the Takanome database to recognise litter faster.
Now we are developing Takanome in a car. So, by simply driving around, we can find and analyse litter with the help of artificial intelligence and make a wide litter map.
By recording the streets using a car-held camera or a smartphone, the Takanome app can identify different types of waste. Taking a step further, we used artificial technology to develop a litter map for Japan.
Do you plan to expand this litter mapping exercise all over the world, allowing governments to target the right places to conduct their clean-up activities and monitor their effectiveness?
Yes, we already have two types of customers; one is the municipalities which need the data to clean up their city. On the other hand, we also find customers who wish to join our research by gathering data with their own company vehicles to increase their image as an environmentally-friendly company.
Do you have any more goals, such as creating a plastic distribution research network?
Yes. Most cases of marine plastic pollution come from land. The plastic distribution research networks would focus on stopping plastic leakage all over the world by observing water surfaces near land in every country to find the microplastics that could lead us to the plastic leakage source. This way, we could create solutions before the leakage happens.
Also read: Ocean Under Stress: The Insidious Effects of Microplastics on Our Coral Reef
Eco-Entrepreneur, CEO of Pirika, Inc
