There are many ways to love the city you live in, one of which is to take part in these events to make your city a cleaner place. To convey the “pick it up!” mentality, and foster feelings “stop littering”, Japan Tobacco’s “Pick it up to enjoy your city!” was started in 2004, and is ongoing all over Japan. These activities have been done a total of 1,828 times up until now, the number of participants has grown to 1,677,179 people, and the total amount of collected garbage totals 837.3 tons. Within Tokyo, the time with the most participants was 2004’s “Edo Ward Residents’ Festival”, which had 4580 people participate, and 2.29 tons of garbage collected. Each municipality’s garbage trucks (two-ton trucks) collect roughly 1.8 tons of garbage, therefore with the opening of one event, garbage trucks become overflowed with garbage collected.

The predecessor to these activities was the “Smoking Clean Campaign” which started in 1974.
With themes such as “preventing throwing away cigarette butts”, “considering the effect on those around you (thinking of those who don’t smoke)”, “fire prevention”, and the distribution of pocket ashtrays, clean ups by Japan Tobacco employees and the tobacco seller’s union where implemented. However, thinking about making our environments more beautiful, the importance of being environmentally friendly, and wanting to do something to help people have better manners, an event was created that everyone can participate in: Pick it up to enjoy your city!

So how do we participate? To do so is simple! On the “Pick it up to enjoy your city!”
(hiromachi) website, confirm the date of the event, make your way to the event keeping an eye out for the green tent. Finishing with reception, you can get ready and receive your garbage bag, tongs and other cleaning items. When looking for garbage, keep in mind the broken window theory: people are more likely to litter where there already is garbage on the ground. Once the area is clean, return to the tent and separate your collected garbage appropriately. In the past, on top of municipalities, schools, event organizers and general volunteers, public figures such as alpinist Ken Noguchi, celebrities Sho Aikawa, Takeshi Tsuruno, Taiyo Sugiura, and musician Yuhi Komiyama have also participated. People who have participated have felt the event was fun, and that they don’t want to litter anymore. To clean up the city is to be conscious about littering. With the small action of picking up garbage, good manners can spread.