The City of Yokohama is one of Japan's leading big cities, with a history of 134 years since it became a city in 1889. About 3.77 million people live there. The city has many different faces: the port and industrial waterfront in the east, the Minato Mirai 21 district with shops and tourist sites, and suburban wards with green space and farmland. Rivers of all sizes flow through the city, and it has one of the world's largest Chinatowns and a beautiful harbor where passenger ships dock. Before COVID-19, about 36 million people visited every year.

With so many visitors, Yokohama has recently faced littering of takeout items in busy downtown areas and large-scale illegal dumping in suburban areas. Residents, local groups and city staff work every day to keep Yokohama beautiful.

For this interview, we spoke with the Urban Beautification Promotion Division of the Resource Recycling Bureau of the City of Yokohama, which works on keeping the city clean. The city has used the "Visualization Page" of Pirika for Governments since 2016. We asked what they have learned from running it, and what kind of city beautification Yokohama plans to promote based on the results of Takanome's on-foot survey.

1. The driving force for a cleaner Yokohama is "local strength": citizens, companies and groups

— Cleanup activities in Yokohama

Until now, the city has kept the streets clean through outsourced cleaning, work with land managers, and awareness campaigns such as preventing littering to raise environmental awareness.
But in fact, the core of Yokohama's cleanup work is voluntary cleaning by residents and by companies and groups with offices in the city. This was Yokohama's strength even before the Visualization Page.

Some of these activities are started by local people on their own, and some at the city's request, but most are done by volunteers. We are still very grateful for everyone's work.

For example, many volunteer groups have signed up for "Hama Road Supporters", a program for cleaning and caring for roads near them. In this way, a cleaner Yokohama comes less from the city coordinating activities and more from local people acting on their own.
We also see everyone's energetic work on the Visualization Page, and we are truly thankful that so many people are making an effort.

— What we learned in six years since the Visualization Page began in 2016

According to the monthly report we get from Pirika, use of the Pirika App shown on the Visualization Page is rising year by year. The number of litter-picking participants, posts and active accounts are all growing. It has risen sharply since FY2021 in particular. I think this is because COVID-19 made in-person cleanups impossible, and the Pirika App spread as a tool that lets people act on their own while staying connected. SDGs are also in the media these days, so I think some people started picking up litter as an SDGs action they can do close to home.

We also learned that the amount of litter each person picks up has not changed much. So to get more litter picked up, we focus less on telling people to "pick up more litter" and more on increasing the number of volunteers who pick it up.

Outsourced cleaning and removing illegally dumped waste cost a lot, so we want to keep working with local people to keep the city clean.

— Response to the Visualization Page

We have heard from users, for example, "My child littered, and that led us to start picking up litter together." There are also people who met in the Pirika App and pick up litter together, which I think helps energize cleanup activities. Companies tell us they are happy to see their names in the "Participating groups" list at the bottom of the Visualization Page.

Staff inside the city also use it to promote their divisions' activities. Other local governments facing city cleanliness issues sometimes ask us about using Pirika.

— Working with local partners increases company and group accounts on Pirika

The city supports cleanups by sponsoring cleanup events held by companies and collecting the litter from volunteer cleanups. The city also joins cleanup meetings held by companies and asks them to post on the Pirika App.

Since 2019, we have also run a campaign that gives original Yokohama tongs to people who newly register and post on the Pirika App. We feel this has also helped increase the number of users.

2. Starting Takanome on-foot surveys to measure the effect of cleanup work

— In the FY2021 citizen survey, how clean people feel the city is differed by area

The survey showed that in suburban wards such as Seya, Izumi and Kanazawa, many people feel the city is "clean and tidy", while in wards with many visitors and residents, such as Nishi, Naka and Tsurumi, this feeling is weaker.

We hear that areas with many shops have a lot of food and takeout packaging littered by people eating while walking. This may be part of the difference in satisfaction.

Another factor may be whether cleanups are easy to notice in an area. Yokohama's neighborhood associations are very well organized, and they often clean residential areas regularly. Citizens easily notice such work, which may naturally raise satisfaction.

Yokohama also sees raising satisfaction in areas with many visitors as a key issue for keeping the city clean. We work with local shopping street associations and local companies to actively promote cleanups and improve manners every day.

— Takeout-related littering stands out

During the last three years affected by COVID-19, there were periods when people avoided eating out. I often saw plastic containers from lunch boxes and snacks littered in parks and other outdoor places, along with cans and PET bottles.

To reduce littering, Yokohama works with local shopping street associations and local companies to actively promote cleanups and improve manners. It also uses signs and notices in priority beautification districts (28 districts in the city) to raise citizens' awareness.

City staff should lead in reducing waste. So the city works with the convenience store in the city hall building, which many staff use, to encourage bringing your own cutlery and bags and to cut single-use plastic.

— Understanding the situation with Takanome surveys

We consider and run Takanome on-foot surveys mainly in priority beautification districts (28 in the city) and smoking-prohibited districts (8 in the city) designated by Yokohama. We often choose areas with many visitors, where many people ask for action on littering.

The purpose of the survey is to measure the effect of work in each district. We have kept surveying areas with many visitors that are also smoking-prohibited districts (except Isezakicho-Chojamachi and Yamashitacho), such as Shin-Yokohama Station, the Kannai area, Isezakicho-Chojamachi, Yamashitacho, Minato Mirai and around Yokohama Station, because they suit measuring the effect of our efforts. In particular, we used Takanome survey data to make the city even cleaner than usual when welcoming events such as the Rugby World Cup and the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

— How we use Takanome survey data

We use it as one input for choosing places for more effective outsourced cleaning and for thinking about measures against litter flowing into the ocean. With the spread of takeout, littered containers such as plastic packaging have become an issue in areas with many visitors. Together with the ward office divisions that promote city cleanliness, we plan Takanome surveys using detailed information on littered items.

— Measures against plastic litter flowing into the ocean

Rivers of all sizes flow through Yokohama, and many local people volunteer to clean them. We are also planning a survey of how much plastic litter is in the city's rivers and how much littered waste near rivers could lead to marine plastic litter. We want to use the results for awareness work and future cleanups.

3. "More people picking up litter means more people not littering"

— How we keep local people's environmental awareness high

One way is environmental education. At tours of the city's incineration plants and school visits, we show videos of how littered waste flows to the sea, and we hold poster contests. These give people of all ages, from children to adults, a chance to raise their environmental awareness.

We also think that getting more people to pick up litter, that is, "energizing cleanups of litter on the street", is an important point for raising environmental awareness. Preventing littering and cleaning up are two sides of the same coin. People who pick up litter probably do not litter, and if litter is not thrown away, the city stays clean on its own. Energizing litter picking helps build an environment where littering is prevented. Yokohama's citizens, companies and groups are very strong, and we believe that having both work together as the driving forces of cleanup work will help keep the city beautiful.

— The city we want to build and what we want to try

Once again, we sincerely thank citizens and the volunteers of companies and groups for helping keep the city beautiful.
In a big city like Yokohama, we believe that when local people, companies and volunteers work together and each person becomes more aware of the environment, the city can become even cleaner.

The City of Yokohama will keep working hard to build stronger ties between individuals and communities, and between communities.

Yokohama's Visualization Page: here (Japanese)

Details of Pirika for Governments: here

Details of Takanome: here