🇬🇧 Two human-sized fish made from individual flip-flops and dented water bottles adorn the entrance gate of Eco Barge Clean Seas, a small non-profit environmental organization in Airlie Beach on Australia’s east coast. They look cute, but they are intended to spur the community to tackle a global problem right on its doorstep.

Jane empties the contents of a dirty white sack onto the sorting table in the corrugated iron shed—located at the curious address „halfway along Boatyard Road.“ To reach the site this morning, the volunteers had to wade through knee-deep water at high tide. Spilling from Jane’s sack are stray flip-flops, punctured PET bottles, two toothbrushes, fragments of plastic chairs, a tangled clump of fishing net, and a host of other marine debris. A spider and a cockroach, having made themselves at home amidst the rubbish, scurry about frantically in search of a new hiding place.

„What do you think we find most often during our cleanup trips along the beaches and coastlines?“ Jane asks the four women who have turned up today to help with the sorting. „Bottle caps?“ Leah guesses—and she is right. Australia does not yet have a „tethered caps“ law like the one introduced in the European Union to curb the problem of loose caps. Instead, regulations vary by state; in some places, removing the caps before recycling the bottles is actually mandatory, Jane explains. Consumers are confused, though more often than not, they are simply careless. Packaging materials, clothing, and everyday items are left behind on the beach or accidentally dropped overboard. Larger items were likely washed into the sea by storms or deliberately dumped as industrial waste.

Backpackers’ paradise or plastic hell?

The holiday town of Airlie Beach is known as a starting point for boat trips to the Great Barrier Reef and the Whitsunday Islands—a true island paradise. Tourists flock there to feel the powdery sand of the seven-kilometer-long Whitehaven Beach beneath their feet or to snorkel alongside clownfish. Yet it is not just Bali that struggles with washed-up debris—its trash-strewn beaches and coastlines frequently going viral on social media; Australia’s east coast faces the same issue. Waste makes no distinction between industrialized, developing, and emerging nations. This backpackers’ paradise would be a plastic hell were it not for people like Libby Edge, who founded Eco Barge Clean Seas in 2009.

„Education and raising awareness about marine debris are our core priorities,“ she says. „We work actively with the community to promote responsible waste disposal, and inform the public on how to handle injured sea turtles.“ According to the organization, its environmental efforts have involved collecting 260,000 kilograms of marine debris across some 520 boat trips—recycling or repurposing 2,000 kilograms of it—and rehabilitating nearly 300 turtles that had been injured or entangled in trash. What makes the organization truly special is revealed in a brief aside within Libby’s statement: it is the local approach. At a time when major non-profits are managed with the efficiency-driven mindset of commercial enterprises and launch glossy marketing campaigns that rival those for consumer products, there exists a relatively young organization that—through hands-on, grassroots commitment—brings a global issue down to the local community level. For even in a society with widespread, high-quality education, there is a lack of basic, accessible knowledge regarding marine environmental protection.

An Elusive Problem

Global figures regarding marine debris remain vague—and perhaps that is precisely why the issue feels so intangible and personally irrelevant to the general public. The WWF estimates that between 4.8 and 12.7 million tons of plastic enter the oceans annually. That sounds like a staggering amount, but what does it actually represent, and why is there such a wide range? What can one ordinary person possibly do about it? Libby Edge is frustrated by a local newspaper article in which a journalist wrote that her organization had collected 260 kilograms of marine debris (instead of the correct 260,000 kilograms). He didn’t even notice that the figure was far too low—because, ultimately, numbers mean little when the issue doesn’t affect you personally.

According to the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel: „An estimated 100 million tons of plastic waste have entered the ocean to date. Less than 1 percent floats on the surface, while 33 percent has settled along coastlines and on the seabed. Another 27 percent of the plastic waste is located in coastal waters, and 39 percent is in the open ocean between the surface and the seabed.“ It is the 27 percent found in coastal waters that the 2,500 volunteers at Eco Barge Clean Seas focus on. They have already completed around 13,000 individual volunteer shifts. And anyone who has once gone out on the „Eco Barge“ to collect trash—feeling the resulting muscle soreness in their arms afterward—or has watched in astonishment and horror in the barn as a staggering array of bizarre items spills out of the bags from a small town like Airlie Beach, will never forget the experience—and might just change their behavior.

Three Gals and a Trash Bag

The volunteers are a diverse mix: tourists fed up with sightseeing, retirees looking for something to do, and environmental professionals wanting to act on their convictions in their spare time. Jane has been involved for four years. The retired teacher initially took on substitute teaching assignments. „Then I volunteered to cut down trees that were in danger of falling onto houses.“ In doing so, she witnessed a great deal of gratitude and encountered many personal stories, as the owners had often agonized over the decision for years. When the strenuous physical labor became too much for Jane, and she and her husband felt like a change of scenery, they moved to Airlie Beach. There, Jane now volunteers with Eco Barge.

The work here isn’t exactly easy, either; the full trash bags are so heavy that it takes three people to haul them into the barn. As an educator, Jane brings valuable skills to the task of guiding the volunteers: Leah, a marine biologist, recently moved to Airlie Beach from Mackay with her boyfriend and is looking to meet people in the area. Maria arrived by bus from the Nomads Hostel. More of a desk-bound professional in real life, I am pitching in as a journalist on a sabbatical in Australia. The local carpenter stops by, though not to help; he’s there to pick up the collected driftwood. He might be able to put some of it to use. Kerry, from Perth, runs two excursion boats and enjoys having someone to chat with while volunteering. She takes charge of the conversation, sharing one anecdote after another while we work—like how her dog swiped chocolate from the cupboard this morning and smeared it all over the carpet. The fact that there is an environmental protection award named after her, which she gets to present every year. The fact that she took part in a pub swimming race.

Rubber, Fabric, and Hard Plastic Scraps

However, sorting requires a certain level of concentration. While leather or fabric shoes fall under the „cloth“ category, flip-flops are collected in the „rubber“ pile. Plastic parts are classified as „hard plastic scraps“ if it is no longer possible to tell what they originally were. Alternatively, they can be categorized more specifically under „household items“ (coat hangers, flower pots) or „personal care items“ (toothbrushes, shampoo bottles). Sometimes, it is simply a matter of interpretation. Yet, it is important to give serious thought to where items belong, because, as Jane explains, „After sorting, the waste is counted and weighed. The data is submitted to the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) Database—a national register for marine debris—and influences environmental legislation.“ For instance, could there be a future regulation banning the rubber coating used on marina pontoons? While intended to protect boat hulls, the coating is often scraped off by the vessels and ends up in the water.

For the time being, Eco Barge Clean Seas leaves such considerations and political lobbying to others. Instead, Libby Edge dreams of establishing an educational center and offering courses for students, local residents, and tourists on marine environmental protection. A group of children with disabilities sometimes comes by to help; tasks must then be improvised to suit their abilities, as the jumble of items found in the bags would be overwhelming for them. The determined founder is also experimenting with turning marine debris into jewelry, toilet seats, chair seats, and tabletops—items that might eventually be sold. To this end, it is shredded and doused with liquid synthetic resin. Furthermore, the initiative showcases recycling techniques that have long been known to people in developing countries: for instance, drinking bottles filled with shredded plastic can be used as so-called „ecobricks“ to build houses or pathways. What potential applications could Australians adopt from this to turn their plastic scourge into something positive?

Environmental Organization or Dumping Ground?

For now, however, these areas of activity remain dreams for the future. In the harsh reality of running a small environmental organization, most time is consumed by fundraising. Libby’s core team also coordinates and carries out public outreach, volunteer recruitment and supervision, the care of injured turtles, and core environmental work along the beaches and coastline. Then there is the plastic waste that people simply leave at the gate, assuming Eco Barge Clean Seas will take care of it. While that isn’t really the intended procedure, the trash can’t just be left sitting there, either. And so, Jane and her team of volunteers may be finished for the day—having sorted, counted, and weighed the waste, then distributed some of it into standard general waste, glass, and recycling bins while setting the rest aside for processing—but there is still plenty to do. Once cyclone season is over, the „eco-barge“ will set sail again and almost certainly return with many new bags full of marine debris.

The original German version of the article was translated using Google Translate.

Photo: Eco Barge Clean Seas