For the past few days I’ve been working as a translator at a Clean Tech conference. There were 5 of us translators, and each of us had one Japanese businessman or city employee to tend to.

The person who I translated for was from a southern city called Kita-Kyushu, which had recently been designated by the Japanese government as an Environmental Model City; with everything from solar, wind, clean coal powers, high standard recycling, green buildings, hybrid cars and top notch education on sustainable development, Kita-Kyushu sounded like an oasis.

There were 800 people listening to speeches and panel discussions, networking amongst each other during lunch and dinner breaks. The attendance fee was $2000 each, so you can imagine the quality of food! Most people were either venture capitalists, bankers or lawyers, looking for the next big bang in economy. There’s a lot of hope for clean technology, especially since it’s a necessity more than a trend.

One of the speeches mentioned the Great Pacific Garbage Patch . It’s a patch of floating plastic debris, twice the size of Texas, that slowly moves clock wise in the North Pacific gyre. You can watch a video here. He also said that enough intake of plastic effects our reproductive systems, like reduced sperm counts.

When the luncheon speech was over people stood and clapped, and the leftover food was quickly taken away through the back doors. I couldn’t help notice the amount of wasted food on the plates and the plastic bottles of half empty waters.