Running her hands through the fine sand at the Chigasaki Headland beach, Naomi Arimoto chances upon something familiar. “This is a piece of the artificial lawn that is put in gardens in Japan. There’s always a lot of this lying around,” said the 42-year-old Japanese manicurist, holding a slim piece of green plastic between her thumb and forefinger before dropping it into a sieve. Arimoto visits the beach near her home south of Tokyo every month to gather microplastics that other cleaners might miss and mould them into decorative tips to put on false nails at her salon. She came up with the idea after taking part in community cleanups along the coast. “I saw with my own eyes just how much plastic waste was in the ocean, I thought it was horrifying," she said. Arimoto opened a nail salon in her home in 2018 after a spinal condition forced her to give up her career as a social worker, and she's been using Umigomi, or "sea trash," to make nail art since 2021. To turn sea trash into treasure, Arimoto starts b