Thank you Hongkongers!

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to all the 200 plus people that came to Discovery Bay today to help us clear up the pellets from our beaches.  You guys are awesome.  I couldn’t believe how far some of you travelled to get here and for most of you it was your first time to Discovery Bay and your first time participating in a beach cleanup!

The response from the media was quite overwhelming.  When the papers finally picked up on the story (via social media) everything went into overdrive.  Gary & I were interviewed pretty much non stop from 4pm Friday.  We were still receiving calls at 2am (why oh why people!!)  and Saturday was more hectic.  The media storm had arrived!  The big story was in Apple Daily with some pretty impressive animations to dramatise the event http://hk.dv.nextmedia.com/actionnews/hit/20120804/16574795/16575340

The media likes to have bad guys in a story as that is far more interesting than everyone co-operating in a disaster and there were certainly a lot of questions trying to get us to blame and point fingers.  There were a lot of people that expressed the view that the government was too slow to react.  It probably would have been better for the government to release a statement earlier but just like most of the population of HK no one really had any idea of the issues invovled with pre-production pellets or nurdles at the begining.  I am not trying to condone the government’s actions but I can understand that they needed to work out what the issues were before releasing a statement.  It certainly would have been better for us and the environment if they had done this earlier as it would have evoked a faster reaction from cleanup crews and volunteers.  There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from this disaster and hopefully in the future we will see better practices from everyone that has been involved.  There are things that can be improved on with Sinopec, the shipping company and the government.

Just to give you an idea of how much has been cleaned this is a before and almost after couple of pictures.  All the volunteers worked so hard, were really enthusiastic and seemed to have a lot of fun.  It was great!

The rubbish pictured above is on the high tide line.  It is made up of typhoon debris and pellets.  Most of it is small fragments of plastic and unfortunately there is just so much of it.  It runs most of the way along the beach.  All this needs to be go!

And most of it did go!!  Over 200 bags were filled on the beach which includes a huge amount of pellets as well as a lot of typhoon debris.  This beach has not been this clean for a very long time.  It really looks beautiful – thank you to all those who worked so hard on this beach and on all the other beaches.

One thing that will happen and we need to focus on is getting the pellets that come in on the tidelines.  This will continue for quite a while, but if we can remove these from the beach (sweeping them up) before they end up back in the sea then that will be a good thing.

One of the goals of getting people out for an organised cleanup was to show them how it is done and to empower them to go out alone and find their own beach to clean.  There are so many beaches that need help and we can’t have organised cleanups on all of them.  But we can show people how to do it easily.  Grab a group of friends, head out to your local beach and get geared up for some ‘nurdling’!

For more information on which beaches to head out to and how to help please checkout these links …

http://www.facebook.com/PlasticDisasterHongKong

http://www.facebook.com/DBGreenHK

http://hongkongcoastwatch.blogspot.hk/

Video Update – Plastic Disaster – Hong Kong

Please view the video update on the Plastic Pellet spill in Hong Kong. Please watch, share, and get to your local beach asap to help with the cleanup!

 

 

 

Sinopec Plastic Pellet Disaster worsens

I am often surprised and shocked by a lot of things that happen in Hong Kong – good and bad and the last few days have certainly been both.

The speed of response and manpower that has been offered for this massive pellet spill has been surprising and very much appreciated.  All the government departments that I asked for help have assisted.  Our local management has been great in providing an immediate response to this disaster.   On Thursday we had the Environmental Protection Department (EPD), the Food, Environment & Hygiene Department (FEHD) and local management cleaning the beach with a few of us volunteers.   All up we had close to 40 people, workers and supervisors come out to join forces with myself, Gary Stokes, Kevin Laurie, Angie Bucu and my sister Jodi.  And boy did we all work hard.  Millions of nurdles are not easy to get off a beach!

We were able to remove in excess of 150 bags of nurdles from the sand.  Unfortunately further exploration of the rocky coastline revealed that the disaster was far worse than first thought.

We found around 200 Sinopec branded bags that day making a total of 5000kg of known pellets – alas, half of them had already spilt their contents.

The frustrating thing was trying to get in contact with Sinopec to ask if they had an environmental management plan to contain a plastic pellet spill and to find out how big this was likely to be.  Surely a company with such a glowing and incredibly proud CSR policy would know what to do and be out here to follow up, I thought naively.    The receptionist I spoke with basically told me that they did not have an environmental deptartment and there was no one that could speak to me and then hung up.  For the rest of the day their one phone was off the hook.  I sent them a fax and hoped that it would be read and responded to.

Fortunately after 36hrs delay senior management did respond and they came out to Discovery Bay to meet with us.  We took them to see the 110 or so full bags we had (with dozens of empty bags there too) and then to both local beaches where 40 more bags (intact and not) had washed ashore.

The Sinopec staff were very apologetic and promised to help cooperate with us to find the company that was responsible through the barcodes visible on the bags.  We now have these details including the shipping company and the locations of the spill.  Unfortunately Sinopec do not have any policy or advice on what to do once the pellets leave their factory and what happens if there is a pellet spill.

Gary & I have been spending a huge amount of time following up on this, spreading the word and trying to find out how much of HK this is affecting.  We know through social media sites that it is widespread and every hour or so we are getting calls from government and updates from people over HK reporting on their local beaches.

Sadly it seems this is now massive and we still don’t know the final numbers.  Confirmed this morning was that 3  40 ft shipping containers had been recovered from the sea with 2 of them open.  We don’t know how many of these bags fit into a container but the loss could run well over the 1000 bag mark.  If so, the consequences are devastating.

For me today, being on the beach at the DB Green Post Typhoon cleanup it was even more depressing than normal.  Typhoons have a way of showing you how badly you are treating the planet.  As I was filling my 1st, 2nd, 14th, 25th garbage bag of plastic and vegetation I couldn’t help but think about the scale and tragedy of it all.  The sheer amount of nurdles that were interspersed within the massive amounts of plastic wrappers, cups, straws, toys, styrofoam and nets and every single household item imaginable was truly shocking.  Now we have the full cycle of plastics, as if it wasn’t difficult enough already!  How have we got to this point where at least 10 tonnes of mostly plastic rubbish in all its forms can be dumped on one beach from one of the top cities of the world?

One thing that has amazed me though was the FEHD cleanup team that was dispatched to help  remove the 150 + bags we found on the rocks.  I met them on Friday at the beach at 9am (they had arrived and were cleaning since 6!) and was really shocked. That morning we were to remove over 2000kg of bags and this was the team that was sent.  There were 5 workers and the 2 women when asked, told me they were in their 70s.  I spoke of my reservations to the supervisor and his response is below.

They certainly were fine – they were actually unbelievable.  These people are the most hardworking and strong workers you will ever find!  The women were incredible carrying the 25kg sacks on their shoulders over the slippery rocks.  I was really humbled to be working alongside them.  Certainly the unsung heroes of HK.

A lot of people have been asking me what they can do to help.  The urgent need is to get the plastic pellets off the beaches before they get into the water.  Whilst they are resting on the sand they are really easy to sweep up with a dust pan and brush.  If you have 30 mins or more to spare it would be great to get down to your local beach and fill up a garbage bag.  It isn’t dirty work, the plastic isn’t harmful whilst it is on the sand and anyone can do it.  The garbage bags can be put in the normal rubbish bin.  Also, please let me know what the state of your beach is as we are co-ordinating cleanups with the FEHD and we also want to get a good idea of which beaches are most contaminated and get to them fast.

Every nurdle counts, you never know where that nurdle could have ended up!

Why?

When I have explained to people what I will be doing there is usually one of two responses.  Wow!  That sounds so awesome, what an incredible life changing opportunity! or Why on earth would you want to do that?

There are actually quite a few reasons I want to go.

Over the last 7 years of living on a beach in HK it has become painfully obvious that there is a serious problem in our sea.  Everyday I see evidence of this and it worries me a lot.  I have the opportunity here in HK to do something about this problem.  Yes it is a global issue of significance but I truly believe that I can do my own small part.  Through DB Green (www.dbgreen.org), Discovery Bay’s fabulous environmental group, I have been speaking in schools to kids of all ages about this issue and what each of us can do to make changes in our lives.  In these talks I show photographs of trawl samples from the plastic soup, mammals, fish and birds that have been affected by marine debris and speak about an area I haven’t been to.  I want to go and see it for myself, learn as much as I can from the experts and bring back actual samples of this area and continue to alert people to what we are creating with our disposable and wasteful lives.  HK needs to wake up.  Our throwaway lifestyle is not sustainable.

I also want to see what it is like to live for a month without a mobile phone constantly in reach and to lie on the deck of the boat at night and see nothing but a bazillion stars.

And so it begins …

It all started back in November 2011 when I was researching for a TEDx talk I was doing at Discovery College, Discovery Bay.  I went to the site www.algalita.org which I had been to many times before whilst researching previous talks on plastic pollution in the ocean when I saw an ad for volunteers to crew for an upcoming research expedition to the Plastic Vortex.  I was instantly excited!!  Now, I realise most people would not get excited about sailing to an area that is known to be the Earth’s storage place for plastic, but for me it was a trip of a lifetime.  I quietly filed that little nugget into the back of my mind so I could concentrate on preparing for the  TEDx talk that was scaring the pants off me.  I have done many talks to school kids on this subject and whilst I have always been a little nervous before each one, TEDx is different as there are strict guidelines for speakers, it was being filmed and it is now on YouTube.

Once my talk was finished and I had stopped wandering the streets mumbling to myself rehearsing lines such as …  ‘there is six times more plastic than there is plankton in some parts of the Pacific Ocean’ I could secretly fill in the application.  I actually didn’t expect to be selected on this voyage, I thought there would be so many applications from people that were far more qualified.  People for instance that could actually sail.  Seeing as we were sailing from Tokyo to Hawaii over 4 weeks it might be a handy skill to have.  But they said it wasn’t necessary which was good as my sailing knowledge is very limited.  I only know there are port & starboard to a boat but I couldn’t tell you which was which.  What are the front & back called?? Minor details though.

I did put helpful information on my application like I can swim, I don’t generally get seasick (except for that one time on a really, really rough dive trip),  didn’t snore (very handy for living in very, very close quarters with 12 other people for over a month), I used to be a nurse (in my previous life before I moved to HK) and I was absolutely obssessed with plastic rubbish!  They were obviously very impressed with all my skills and lack of snoring that they said ‘Welcome Aboard Me Hearty’ or something to that effect.  I then casually mentioned to my super understanding husband that my application for the boat trip had been accepted.  He didn’t freak out (externally) although he was as surprised as I was.

So to my obsession.  we moved to HK from the UK (and before that Oz) in 2005.  My son Finn was 1, I wasn’t working, life was great but I wanted to do a little something extra.  I saw an ad for a new ‘green group’ that was starting up in DB so I went to the first DB Green meeting and volunteered my services to organise a beach cleanup in the near future.  I had never done that before but seeing all the rubbish that was clinging to our beaches it seemed like a worthwhile thing to do.  One beach cleanup lead to another and before I knew after 6 years of cleanups we are now doing them monthly on several beaches.  I don’t know how many cleanups we have done but I do know we have stopped possibly/probably/at least 30 tonnes of rubbish from re entering our sea and encouraged a whole troup of little eco warriors to be more aware of their surroundings.

Once I sarted doing the cleanups I learnt more about the bigger picture and slowly started reading about the consequences of all this rubbish on our beaches.  And you know what, it is truly frightening what we have done!  I started talking in schools to the kids and sharing what I had learnt, it was amazing that a problem so big was practically unheard of …