21 Feb Community Cleanup Action in Buano Island

To commemorate the National Trash Awareness Day on 21 February 2019, a number of fishermen, youth leaders, and students in Buano Island carried out “Beach Clean-up” activities. It took place on Friday, 8 February 2019, and was attended by more than 100 participants from two main villages in Buano, namely the Buano Utara Village and Buano Selatan Village.

This activity started from late afternoon, at around 16.00 WIT, and was located at Soa Tengah Beach between the two villages. Before implementing the beach clean-up, CTC as the implementing partner of USAID Sustainable Ecosystems Advanced (USAID SEA) Project, provided a brief presentation regarding the threats of single-use plastic waste towards the sustainability marine biodiversity and called on all participants to stop littering at sea, as well as to reduce the single-use plastic waste in everyday life.

With the spirit of “Lestari Lautku Banyak Ikanku” which has been echoed by CTC together with community leaders and Pejuang Laut, the participants were eager to clean the beach and separate the trash found into two categories: plastic waste and cloth waste. In less than one hour, the participants managed to clean the beach for around 50-meter length and collected as much as 500 kilograms of garbage, which was evenly divided between plastic waste and cloth waste.

One participant, Melana Sahitumbu (11), a fifth grade student at SDN 1 Buano Selatan, said that she was happy to participate in the beach clean-up and became more aware about the threats of plastic waste for the sustainability of marine ecosystem. “I’ve heard many animals died from eating plastic waste. I wanted to clean the beach so our sea and coastal area can be clean and healthy,” she said after the event.

One of the USAID SEA Project’s Pejuang Laut in Buano Selatan, Roberth Hutuely, said that the collected plastic waste will be dried and destroyed by burning because Buano Island does not have a waste treatment system yet. On the other hand, for the fabric waste, it will be used as a pile of foundation for the sea breaker at the river estuary in Buano Selatan Village. The village government, according to Roberth, will adopt the beach clean-up activity on monthly basis to support the existing program of “Jumat Bakti” that takes place every Friday.