Bali is experiencing one of the worst monsoon seasons in recent history. While heavy rains and storms have calmed a little in the last week, the overall impact is still felt across the island, especially along the coastlines of the Central South.
Bali’s Jimbaran and Kuta Beaches are being hit by tides upon tides of plastic and ocean debris.
On Saturday, 4th and Sunday, 5th January, community members in Bali, including tourists, are invited to join one of the biggest beach clean-up operations in recent years.
The emergency clean-up, orchestrated by local environmental NGO Sungai Watch, will start at 7 am at Kedonganan Beach in Jimbaran on 4th January and is set to finish around 12 pm.
On Sunday 5th, the clean-up will be operated across two shifts, also starting at Kedonganan Beach in Jimbaran. Shift one will be held from 7 am until 11 am, and shift two will start at 2 pm and go until 5 pm.
Kedonganan Beach and Jimbaran Beach have been by far the worst impacted by the tides of plastic waste, though tons upon tons of trash and ocean debris have also been washing up along Kuta and Legian Beach over the last few weeks.
In an Instagram post, co-founder of Sungai Watch Gary Bencheghib shared, “This weekend, we’re attempting to organize the biggest cleanup we have ever organized, and we need all helping hands.”
He added, “We are experiencing a plastic emergency in Jimbaran. For the last 7 days, we have collected +25 tons of plastics but plastic waves are still washing up non stop. More than ever we need the support of the Indonesian government.”
“The newly appointed Minister of Tourism and Minister of Environment will be in Bali this weekend… let’s pray for them to come to Jimbaran and make the plastic pollution battle a priority this year for Indonesia.”
Bencheghib told the Canggu Community, “This isn’t just a local problem; it’s a crisis impacting all of Indonesia. The scale of this pollution is staggering, and urgent action from individuals, businesses, and the government is required to address the root causes of plastic waste.”
With over 25,000 kilograms of trash collected from Kedonganan Beach alone, its yet to become clear just quite how much trash has been deposited along Bali’s coastline since the monsoon seasons began.
Every year Kedonganan Beach is typically the worst impacted due to the direction of ocean currents, and every year the amount of debris that is deposited by the tides increases.
During the clean-up operation so far, live turtles have been found trapped in the plastic debris, and while they were successfully returned to the ocean, there is no telling just how much marine wildlife has been harmed by the volume of plastic waste in Bali’s oceans.
Shocking footage from Jimbaran-Kuta Beach on Thursday, 2nd January, shows thousands of small fish stranded on the shoreline. Carried up onto the sand and tangles in the debris, local community members did their best to gather the fish and get them back into the water, but for many, it was too late.
Over the Christmas holidays, there were requests from local government leaders to implement mitigations that would help prevent so much trash from being washed up onto Bali’s most famous tourist beaches.
Officials from the Indonesian Tourism Industry Association (GIPI) called for the government to install nets out at sea that could collect the debris before it is carried to the shore.
The Chairman of the Indonesian Tourism Industry Association (GIPI) Bali, Ida Bagus Agung Partha Adnyana, told reporters, “My input regarding the garbage in Badung Regency is that in the future it has to be collected from the sea, not collected on the beach anymore. How we can do it maybe can be thought about.”
He added, “These ideas can be accommodated once later there will be a clean tourism task force; we can process these ideas if we can establish cooperation between the central government, regional governments, the private sector, including the Ministry of Environment, later we will bring them under the deputy destination.”
A press officer for the Ministry of Tourism, Ayu Marthini, called for communities across Indonesia to stop pointing the figure at one another regarding the cause or origin of the trash.
She said, “The Head of Bali Tourism Office said this was a shipment; there are other regions who also said it was a shipment [from elsewhere]. What if all of Indonesia is clean, then this kind of thing will not happen, so we try to answer not at the estuary but at the upstream. If everything is clean, of course our tourism is healthy.”
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arthur
Sunday 5th of January 2025
Indonesian lazy people will never change. it is so comfortable to throw away the garbage in the rivers....
JR
Sunday 5th of January 2025
Wake the F up !!!!!! The super stupid goffanor Lobster needs to pull his head out and make and inforce laws stopping the Hillbillies living near water way of throwing their garbage in the rivers. Start by making garbage pickup free for everyone. put the offenders in jail.
Shorty
Sunday 5th of January 2025
Yes a behavioral change is needed 'upstream' but that will take years.
Ocean collection either by river booms or ocean collection is impractical.
What if daily beach grooming equipment was bought, used and funded by the hotels and resorts at the main polluted beaches?
In other beaches like for example,Tanjung Benoa, make hotels and beach front businesses clean up their beach frontage.
Mary
Sunday 5th of January 2025
Luckily all foreigners aren't paying an extra 150,000IDR to enter Bali, since nearly a year,to help clean it up. A by now rather large fund. Oh wait they are paying and now you ask them to pay and work to solve the problem that fund was to help solve?
Paul
Sunday 5th of January 2025
Bali, like the rest of Indo needs a trash collection system. Just 1 landfil on Bali; nothing for 1 million people on Sumatra; Jakarta only has 2. Poor people cant afford to pay for it. Gov amd business have the money to provide the service and build a waste to energy plant. But Gov will never give permits to build them.