Beach Clean at Teluk Likas
Last weekend we participated in a Beach Clean, organised by our kids’ school at Teluk Likas beach in Kota Kinabalu. Our boys are always up for a day on the beach – who isn’t? – and we made a deal with them to do our part and collect as much rubbish as we could for a minimum of 1 hour and then there would be time for chasing crabs and digging for critters. The plan worked out well; the kids did a great job and lasted a good two hours before beach play took over. In fact, I even got told off for stopping and taking notes and photos when I should be collecting rubbish!
Nasty nappies, chili sauce sachets, panty liner wrapping, lollipop stick, straws and plastic cutlery were some of the items we removed from the beach. Physically picking all this up really does make you think about how much unnecessary rubbish we humans produce and waste. I could not help think about how we need to make more efforts at designing and manufacturing sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives and support the manufacturers and retailers that do. It is kinder to us, our fellow species and Planet Earth. The more demand there is the cheaper and more accessible it will be for all of us.
Protecting the Wildlife and Wild Places we love
As we walked along combing the beach, we talked about the wildlife that lives on the beach and in the water and how our efforts that morning were benefiting it. We talked about what other things we can do, quite easily as a family to help solve the global problem of plastic pollution in our seas – this list is by no means exhaustive but these are all steps we personally know we can manage and strive to do so every day:
- Not use products that are or contain single use plastic of course tops the list i.e. straws, tissue paper packets and everything else we saw on the beach that morning
- Not buy single portion drinks with straws
- Not buy individually wrapped biscuits and sweets
- Replace the above with reusable items.
- Always bring our own reusable shopping bags
- Refuse individually packaged fruit and veg
- Keep a stack of reusable tie-string bags in the car with the shopping bags for products that need weighing in the shop
- Buy less new products and more second hand products when possible; a win-win as we save both costs and resources
- Plan a personal, family Climate Deal – I hope to carry this out and write about it soon.
Note to self: bring the kids beach shovels next time to help dig up plastic wrappers and bags buried deep in the sand. Some plastic bags fell apart when we tried pulling them out with our fingers. We had no choice but to leave them behind to decompose into micro plastic. A hazard to the marine life that often ends up ingesting it before possibly ending up on someone’s dinner plate! An unappealing and sad thought about how we humans are polluting the worlds food chains; very much including those we ourselves are part of and benefit from.
An additional perk for the kids was that for all the rubbish they collected, they were awarded house points. Their school has a House System (think Harry Potter) and a reward system that they use to motivate the students. I could see it worked, not just with ours but also with the other students who returned from the beach to the hut with one full bag of rubbish after another to have it weighed and recorded by the teachers. Go Sapi Sun Bears. Go Gaya Pangolins. Go Sulug Sharks.
To end on a happy note – it was great to see the DBKK workers rolling away loads of rubbish and doing their part in keeping the beach clean. And for the record, there were many bins all along the beach so we really have no excuse for discarding anything here – a place we all visit to enjoy outdoor life and Nature.
I would love to hear some comments and see photos from other schools and groups that carry out Beach Cleans in Sabah.
