  We present an algorithm to reduce the coloured box-ball system, a one
dimensional integrable cellular automaton described by motions of several
colour (kind) of balls, into a simpler monochrome system. This algorithm
extracts the colour degree of freedom of the automaton as a word which turns
out to be a conserved quantity of this dynamical system. It is based on the
theory of crystal basis and in particular on the tensor products of sl_n
crystals of symmetric and anti-symmetric tensor representations.
