Happy Earth Day!
Celebrating Earth Day on April 22, 2024, Sungai Watch conducted multiple cleanups around Bali and East Java. Over the course of two days, they collected over 10 tons of plastic waste!
The Sungai Watch community focuses on handling waste in rivers. To combat plastic waste, the community is reached out to through direct engagement.
The Sungai Watch community also educates the public to participate in monitoring and keeping the river clean.
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Through their social media accounts, Sungai Watch writes that every day is Earth Day at Sungai Watch as they clean rivers and stop plastic from going into the ocean.
According to them, it’s devastating that they were able to remove so much waste from the environment to celebrate Earth Day.
“These cleanups are only a bandage solution, and we look forward to continuing to push for upstream solutions to improve the local waste management infrastructure,” they wrote on social media.
Sungai Watch is a river protection movement on the island of Bali. Gary Bencheghib, founder of Make A Change World, launched the Sungai Watch movement to protect Bali’s rivers and to prevent plastic waste from flowing into the ocean.
According to DW, Gary, who is currently based in Bali, saw first-hand the impact of plastic on the island’s ecosystem.
Starting from a plastic waste cleanup operation on the beaches of Bali, Gary claimed to have discovered that 90% of the plastic waste that appears on beaches and the sea actually comes from rivers. For this reason, they decided to shift their focus to river protection.
