SYDNEY: Thousandsof activists fanned out across beaches and rivers throughout Asia yesterday,picking up rubbish and drawing attention to the amount of trash that is dumpedworldwide, a day after millions marched to urge world leaders to act on climatechange. The volunteers turned out for World Cleanup Day - an initiative thathas got millions into the streets and cleaning up litter across the globe sinceit began just over a decade ago.
The Pacificisland nation of Fiji swung into action early, with people scouringpalm-fringed beaches for rubbish, heaving discarded car tyres and engine partsfrom the coast just west of the capital Suva. On Australia's Bondi beachactivists sifted through the sand, carting off bits of plastic and cigarettebutts. In the Philippines, some 10,000 people swept across a long stretch ofbeach on heavily polluted Manila Bay, clutching sacks they filled with rubbish.Plastic pollution is a major problem across Southeast Asia, but particularly inthe Philippines, which - along with China, Vietnam and Indonesia - isfrequently listed among the world's worst offenders.
"It's for usto help the environment, especially here in Manila, there's a lot ofgarbage," Mae Angela Areglado, a 20-year-old student told AFP as shepitched in with the cleanup - held right next to the city's huge Baseco slum."(Plastic is) affecting the marine life because they think that it isfood", she added. The mass cleanup is coordinated by the Let's Do ItFoundation, which aims to "connect and empower people and organizationsaround the world to make our planet waste free", according to its website.
It attractedaround 1,400 volunteers in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, where they scoured differentareas of the city for litter under the scorching sun. "Although ouractions are very small - like cleaning trash from the sidewalk - it couldspread a meaningful message," 18-year-old Hoang Thi Hoan told AFP, asmotorists zipped by on a busy street. InChina, a group of about 30 gathered by the Xiaotaihou River in Beijing to pickup rubbish along the manmade waterway.
"You can'tget permission to organize large events in Beijing due to tight security aheadof the 70th anniversary celebrations," organizer Zhang Hongfu, from theenvironmental group Friends of Nature, said. Seventy-nine percent of theplastic ever made has ended up dumped, with little reused or destroyed despiterecycling and other initiatives to curb use, a UN report from 2018 said. Justnine percent of the nine billion tons of plastic the world has produced hasbeen recycled. - AFP