Plastic rocks on an isolated island
The sombre message of stones made of plastic found on an uninhabited island far from the Brazilian coast.
Sungai Watch prevents Bali’s plastic waste from reaching the ocean
02 March 2023
In October 2020, Sungai Watch placed their first trash barrier in a river in Bali to stop plastic and organic material from reaching the ocean. The barrier is cleared daily. Sungai Watch has thus far placed 180 barriers and collected more than 982,000 kilos of plastic.
All that waste is counted, weighed and analysed. By the end of 2022, they counted was as many as 235,218 items. Princess Traveler supports Sungai Watch in their mission.
TO MEASURE IS TO KNOW
Of all the non-organic waste Sungai Watch removes from Bali’s rivers, plastic is by far the largest fraction. The organisation’s guiding principle is that all the material has value for reuse. The organic waste is composted. The plastic waste is sorted by type and recyclability options. Some of the waste cannot be recycled because it has been in the water too long, is too heavily contaminated or consists of packaging that cannot be recycled at all. The non-profit organisation’s goal is not only to get Bali’s rivers clean, but also to make the issue transparent and involve all stakeholders in solutions.
Princess Traveler a Dutch manufacturer of sustainable travel cases, is one of those stakeholders and is closely involved with Sungai Watch.
MOST POLLUTING BRANDS
Most of the retrieved plastics are packaging materials. Readable barcodes are scanned and data such as type and brand are stored in a database. Danone tops the list of top-10 biggest polluters of 2022, primarily due to the PET bottles in which they sell drinking water. Unilever came fourth thanks to its sachets. These are mini-packagings that consist of several layers of different plastic types, which makes them very difficult to recycle, if at all. Unilever is the biggest sachets provider.
THE EQUIVALENT IN WEIGHT FOR EACH TRAVEL CASE
Princess Traveller manufactures travel cases that are in part made of derelict fishing nets. These “ghostnets” are collected at sea by Waste Free Oceans. After being sorted and cleaned, the nets are processed into the raw material for the suitcases. The manufacturer has funded the installation of a number of barriers in Bali. The aim is to capture the equivalent weight needed for the suitcases. Per suitcase, this amounts to 2.7 kilos and the total aim is about 400,000 kilos in three years. One such suitcase can be won through the National Postcode Lottery.
Plastic Soup Foundation is also involved in this project and checks whether Sungai Watch is indeed removing the targeted weight of plastic from Bali’s rivers.
Photo: Sungai Watch.
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