Inaugural ”SpoGomi” World Cup to Be Held in Tokyo on November 22 (1)
The Nippon Foundation will host the first-ever “SpoGomi” World Cup on November 22 in which teams representing 21 countries will compete to see who can pick up the most litter from the streets of Tokyo.
Starting in March this year, qualifying tournaments were held around the world to select teams to represent their countries, with the winners earning an all-expenses-paid trip to Tokyo for the inaugural world championship.
“SpoGomi”, a combination of “sport” and “gomi” (Japanese for trash), was launched in Japan in 2008 as a competition to encourage people to clean up public spaces.
The SpoGomi World Cup 2023 is being held as part of the Umi-to-Nippon Project (The Ocean and Japan Project) that the foundation launched in 2017 to raise people’s awareness of the issue of ocean debris, with the aim of passing on clean and beautiful oceans to the next generation.
Representing Japan at the World Cup 2023 will be a team from Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast. It competed against teams from 45 other prefectures (only Shiga Prefecture did not take part) in a national qualifying event held in Tokyo on October 9.
Beginning in April, preliminary rounds took place in all 47 prefectures of Japan, involving 1,175 teams and a total of 3,525 people aged between 6 and 67.
Under SpoGomi World Cup rules, teams of three people, regardless of age or gender, compete for points based on the amount and type of trash picked up in a designated area within a given time. Teams have one hour to gather garbage and an additional 20 minutes to sort it.
Burnable and non-burnable trash items earn 10 points per 100 grams, cans and bottles 12 points, and PET plastic bottles 25 points. Cigarette butts earn the highest score, 100 points.
Braving occasional rain, the team from Niigata, dubbed Smile Story, earned 4,381.9 points for the 37.58 kilograms of trash they collected, over 20 kilograms more than the runners-up.
On earning the honor of representing Japan at the World Cup, team leader Ms. Mariko Tsunamoto said: “We’ve been doing regular beach and river clean-ups for more than three years. The ‘sense of smell’ we’ve developed through this volunteering experience helped us to find and pick up trash on our way to win. As Japanese national champions, we want to test our potential and hopefully win the World Cup.”
The 21 countries participating in the SpoGomi World Cup 2023 are Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States of America and Vietnam.
(To be continued)