4 Ocean: Bali's Beach Cleanup Operation

Hi everybody, I'm Jared Dillingham in Seoul, South Korea, heading down to Bali today. We're going to spend the day, or a couple of days, with 4ocean to see what they're doing to tackle Bali's big problem with garbage. Bali and Lombok have some truly beautiful beaches with white sand and crystal clear water, but a closer look reveals a problem. A never-ending problem with plastic. Ocean currents gather garbage from other parts of Southeast Asia and naturally deposit it on Bali's southwestern coast. The crew in blue is from 4ocean, a company started by surfers in 2017. Their cleanup work is never-ending. The waves constantly carry more plastics and garbage to Bali's beaches. It's got to be frustrating. I could not believe the crew had cleaned this beach a day prior to our visit. We found their garbage cleanup efforts to be as relentless as the currents that bring all the garbage to shore. I think they are in good spirits. They are very proud to be part of 4ocean. Nearby, we met up with another 4ocean group patrolling a river. Here, the trash problem is the result of bad habits and a lack of waste management on Bali. Near the river mouth, a trash boom is set up to catch garbage and keep it out of the ocean. We cruised upstream to check a few problem spots and found every type of household waste you can imagine. This bamboo fence was clean yesterday, but it rained overnight, brought some floodwaters down, and with the waters, brought a whole new load of trash, which they're cleaning up now. No matter how frustrating the garbage itself became at times, and how overwhelming the day's haul seemed, before long, they had the shores cleaned and the garbage all bagged up. 4ocean has developed innovations to make these cleanup efforts more efficient, from the special riverboats themselves to this conveyor system that hoists the full garbage bags up the steep riverbank to waiting trucks. At a warehouse, the true extent of the daily cleanup became even more clear to us. Heaps of garbage bags, all of this from one day. The contents of each gets sorted into different kinds of foams and plastics. Some plastics are washed, dried, and shredded. Others are crushed. These bundles in the warehouse are all from the last 3 or 4 weeks of cleanups. My wide-angle lens wasn't even big enough to capture all the pollution they've removed in the past month or so. These are all shipped out for processing, and they return in spools of recycled plastic thread. 4ocean employs hundreds of people who weave the thread into bracelets. They patiently gave me a lesson, then went back to full speed, each of them making 50 bracelets an hour. 4ocean says the sale of each funds the work to remove 5 pounds of trash. They're up to about 40 million pounds so far. While nothing will change the ocean currents and monsoon rains that bring the bulk of the plastic here, the 4ocean crew believes they can change people's habits with plastic awareness campaigns targeting children and young adults. That matters, of course. From kindergarten, elementary school, it's very important. It's very hard to change the habit, so I think it's better to educate the young. And those bracelets they make sell for about 25 bucks. All of it helps to fund all the work they are continuing to do on Bali. I'll see you next time.