Scores of people gathered on Legian Beach on Saturday morning.

With empty rice sacks in their hands, they came not to enjoy a relaxing morning on the beach, but to collect trash.

Local activists, students, tourists, expatriates and celebrities like actor Hamish Daud and Eka Rock from Bali-based punk rock band Superman Is Dead were among dozens of people participating in a clean-up campaign on the beach.

It was lucky that there were no big piles of trash that morning because local officials and a community group from the Legian customary village have been regularly cleaning up the beach before the campaign started that day.

In Bali, the waves of trash have been causing annual problems and is at its worst during the monsoon season between December and March when strong western winds push marine flotsam onto the beaches.

Plastic bags, bottles, straws and food packaging are easily found after washing up on the shores or the rivers, polluting the beaches particularly when the monsoon peaks in January and February.

Just like in Legian, people flocked to join the campaign organized by One Island One Voice group in about 100 more locations on the resort island on Saturday.

They called on people to stop using plastic, which is one of the biggest threats to the environment.

“The beach clean-up is a good step. However, the most important thing is to change our mindset,” Melati Wijsen, the co-founder of One Island One Voice, said.

“We need to say no to plastic [use],” said Melati who is also the co-founder of the Bye Bye Plastic Bags movement.

“We do not want to see plastic waste ending up in the ocean again.”

Hamish, who grew up in Bali and considers the ocean as his second home, said, “For me, the simplest thing is to bring my own [reusable water] bottle [to replace single-use bottles] and to stop using straws.”

Melati claimed that the number of the participants have doubled to at least 25,000 people this year in the campaign that also aims to support the government’s clean-up campaign nationwide during National Waste Awareness Day, which fell on Feb. 21.

Last year, about 12,000 people participated in the campaign and managed to collect about 40 tons of trash from 55 different locations across Bali.

The Bali administration declared last December a garbage emergency across a 6-kilometer stretch of coast that included popular beaches and those close to Legian Beach, like Kuta, Seminyak and Jimbaran.

Safri Burhanuddin from the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister highlighted the importance of the community’s role in the fight against marine plastic waste.

“Most of the plastic waste ends up in the ocean.

“So, we [the ministry] fully support any activities to raise people’s awareness to stop the use of plastic,” he said.

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