Founders and sisters, Melati (15) and Isabel (13) Wijsen started Bye Bye Plastic Bags back in April 2013 and have since then been having a huge impact on plastic bag usage in Bali and outside.
During their adventure, they’ve met with the UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon, they have signed an MOU with the governor of Bali, Bp. Mangku Pastika, to make the people of Bali say NO to plastic bags, gave a TED Talk in London, and much more.
A snippet from an interview with Forbes Indonesia:
The girls saw it firsthand in their favorite local beach, Seseh, which was, as Melati puts it, “swallowed up by garbage.” “When you’re at the beach sunbathing or going for a swim, you’re swimming with plastic, you’re sunbathing with plastic. There’s no escaping it,” says Melati. Those experiences led them, in April 2013, to start Bye Bye Plastic Bags, when they were just 10 and 12. The two girls attend the Bali Green School, which promotes environmentalism, so their campaign was in keeping with the school’s mission. “The question became ‘who’s going to do something about it?’ We thought ‘why don’t we do something about it? Why don’t we stand up for our island?’,’” Melati says.
Sit back, relax and watch their 11 minute TED Talk to learn more
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Miley_Dahmer on November 30th, 2017 at 14:14 UTC »
This would be great. I was walking thru Bali last year and you'd see families burning trash and just chucking plastic bags on the fire.
stray-light on November 30th, 2017 at 13:24 UTC »
This is great! For people interested in this kind of positive action, check out /r/zerowaste!
Longii88 on November 30th, 2017 at 12:31 UTC »
Having been to Bali this summer I can tell you that many people live through day to day meals wrapped in leaves and then a thin plastic bags. The problem, for those unaware, is not plastic from tourists but the plastic from locals who have the habit of just throwing it into the jungle and rivers.
Bali needs a change of culture first and foremost.
Then again, reducing the amount of available plastic and replacing it with decompodable material would definitely help.