｜Length : 51min. ｜Year : 2005 ｜

The Kawanabe Township, in Kagoshima Prefecture, had been throwing dioxin-contaminated ash in a valley behind the waste treatment facility for some 23 years. The town decided to dig up all the ash that had been dumped, to fully disclose information about their situation, and - in an effort shared by the local government and local residents-to re-evaluate their approach to environmental matters. The township's decision not to hide anything led to a convergence of people of the same mindset, people in Japan and abroad who then contributed their wisdom to an effort that culminated in the birth of an entirely new dehalogenation technology and all this in a town of only 15,000. Although this documentary looks at six years in the history of one small town in Japan, environmental problems have no borders.

｜Length : 49min. ｜Year : 1999 ｜

This documentary records the activities of the ibis on Sado Island from the end of WWII to 1999. "Toki", or the Japanese crested ibis, had become extinct, and by 1999 there was only one surviving ibis that could no longer reproduction. With cooperation from China, a pair of ibis arrived in Sado, and the chick Yu-Yu was born in 1999. Combining interviews with NHK's footage, this program shows how the activities to save the ibis have led to a national movement that later became an international project.

｜Length : 49min. ｜Year : 1998 ｜

Virtual reality threatens the real world's environment

As faster, more sophisticated computers inundate the consumer market, the question of how to dispose of old, unwanted PCs has become an environmental headache which threatens to overwhelm both ecologists and scientists. Computer makers have set up environmental control departments to collaborate with engineers who control production and design so that discarded computers can be broken down into components for recycling. However, demand and the diversity of models makes massive recycling ineffective.

｜Length : 58min. ｜Year : 1997 ｜

One woman's fight to save the ocean

When the Russian tanker Nakhodka sinks in the Japan Sea in early 1997 spilling tons of oil off the coast of a fishing village in Fukui Prefecture, a 74-year-old "ama-san" (woman skindiver) fought for three months to save the sea, which had become an inseparable part of her life. Ms. Konishi's struggle, documented in this program, begins with only ladles and buckets, and ends when she lost consciousness due to a brain hemorrhage.

｜Length : 48min. ｜Year : 1997 ｜

A bureaucrat's struggle with the Kasumigaseki bureaucracy

Research on the revision of a proposed bill to assign responsibility for waste disposal and clean-up takes this show into the bowels of a bureaucracy which is answerable only unto itself. Former Health and Welfare Ministry official Kunio Ogishima sets out to draft a piece of legislation he thinks will benefit Japan, making industry responsible for the waste it generates. But from the beginning, he runs into obstacles at every turn, and the bill is eventually diluted of its original intent. Exhausted after his long battle, Ogishima is stricken by cancer and died one year later.