Every other breath of oxygen we take comes from the ocean. Supporting oceanic health is the key to our future. Cleaning up plastic is just the beginning. Supporting blue carbon projects - nature based systems of carbon capture in the ocean which strengthen the ocean’s resilience - is something we all must get behind.
Sungai Watch is one of those projects Solgaard has gotten behind in recent years that has helped save a total of more than 30 million plastic bottles from entering the ocean! A cleanup group based in Bali started by French siblings Gary, Sam, and Kelly, they're on a mission to clean rivers starting in Indonesia.
Most of the plastic ever produced in the world has never been recycled and is discarded either into landfills or makes its way into the natural environment. Matter of fact 80% of plastic pollution in the ocean comes from 1656 rivers and one of the simplest ways to clean our ocean is by starting in our rivers - where we can catch the plastic before it enters into our seas.
By installing trash barriers at the vital point between land and ocean, Sungai Watch is developing an immediate way to eradicate plastic pollution in the 2nd largest country of plastic polluting only next to China. But stopping the plastic is just the beginning. They go out and collect the plastic into categories, analyzing where the plastic comes from to fuel conversations with stakeholders. The plastic is then prepared for recycling where they experiment with ways to turn the trash into products. Hmmm maybe a backpack or a watch??
Mangrove cleanups are another big initiative taken on by Sungai Watch. There's a lot of illegal dumping going on in Indonesia due to the fact that there's a lack of recycling infrastructure in place. To date they've snagged over 165,000 lbs of plastic in emergency cleanups. Again, cleaning up the problem before they enter the riverways and ocean is something imperative to healthy sea-life.
This Earth Day we would like to thank all the workers, volunteers, and you, our community, for making projects like these exist. Helping support healthy oceans allows all of us continue to explore for good.
