Motivation Monday - No Trash Triangle Initiative and genuine hope 🌊🪸🐠♻️💙

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TL:DR

TL;DR: 🌊 The beautiful marine ecosystem of the Coral Triangle is heavily impacted by ocean plastic, but the local No Trash Triangle Initiative is giving us real hope.

They are successfully working on:

• Weekly trash collection from islands for recycling.

• River trash barriers to stop the flow into the sea.

• Community education to address the source of the problem.

Please check out and if you can support this amazing work

https://www.no-trashtriangle.org/ 

https://www.instagram.com/notrashtriangle/ 

For the first time in a long time, I feel a change happening and feel hopeful for a better future for the marine ecosystem here

It is also an opportunity to think of where you can make a difference

In the Reduce > Reuse > Recycle mindset, there is far greater value, the further left you are. Recycling should be the last resort.

Ask yourself...

Do you need a new plastic bag each time you shop?

Do you need that bottled water when tap water is just as good?

Can you re-use plastic containers and bottles for other things? 

Can you buy in bulk to reduce plastic waste?  

Read on for the full story..

Quick Intro

For anyone who doesn't know, I spend the majority of my life immersed in some of the most incredible nature that this planet has to offer.

I love all nature and am incredibly passionate about conservation but my 1 true love is the sea. 

There is 1 area in the world that blows my mind more than any other...

The Coral Triangle. 🪸🐠

• Where the Pacific meets the Indian ocean, the Indonesian through-flow transports vast amounts of nutrient rich water through passages between the dispersed islands of Philippines, Indonesia and Borneo
• This nutrient-rich is packed with plankton, the source of all life in the ocean.
• The combination of deep channels with shallower waters, and fast flowing rich waters has caused life to explode here
• Despite covering less than 1.5% of the planet, it has a staggering 30% of the worlds coral reefs and 76% of all coral species on the planet can be found here
• 37% of reef fish species can be found here

An Ecosystem under pressure 

Like most ecosystems in the world, the coral triangle is struggling. 

It is holding up better than other coral reef ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef and the coral reefs of the Caribbean but it is under huge strain.  

There are 5 core areas that are impacting the ecosystem and sadly they can all be attributed to us humans:

• Huge amounts of trash in the sea - This is the one I will focus on
• Overfishing 
• Destructive fishing practices such as bottom trawling - This is the underwater version of a football field of the Amazon being lost every minute
• Overtourism and damaging tourism practices - Tourists walking on corals, boats dropping anchors on them
• Mining - A brilliant example of humans solving 1 problem by creating another.  Nikel mining in Indonesia is a consequence of our  move to electric vehicles.  But, mining is dirty, massively destructive on land and sea, unregulated and in opposition to what we are told, totally unsustainable! The mines are poisoning the soil, rivers and seas around them affecting both nature and the people who live there.

Manado, Sulawesi - Indonesia 2 years ago 

I first went to Sulawesi in 2023.  It is a big island with wildly varying landscape from mountains and active volcanoes to low level tropical rainforest and mangroves.  

Sitting in the coral triangle, it has many islands with many pristine coral reefs.

However, what struck me more than anything in Manado was the amount of trash in the sea.  To be on a boat ready to dive and to see a river of plastic waste on the surface of the water was something that no matter how many times I've seen I still find shocking.  It is not 1 or 2 bottles, it is a shocking amount!

In just 1 beach cleanup it is quite normal for 1000Kg of trash to be collected, the weight of a small family car 

The common culprits are single-use plastic bags, single use plastic bottles and a particular issue in Indonesia are these water cups:

Other items include large sacks, fishing line and fishing nets.

One of the reasons trash is so bad in the sea's off Manado is that the rivers are used as dumping grounds for trash. It is often the only way local villages can get rid of trash.  When the rainy season hits, the rain comes hard, the rivers swell and all of the trash flows into the sea. I have heard stories from the islands that in rainy season, the plastic trash on the beach can be up to 3ft high!

It is easy to think of this issue as a local issue and there are definitely local challenges:

• Waste collection is limited and the infrastructure to deal with it doesn't exist
• The local people often have no alternative but to burn trash or more commonly put it in the river because then it disappears away from their village, out of sight out of mind.
• There is NO recycling on the island at all
• There is no education about the impact of plastic waste, local people have did not grow into the plastic revolution like us in the western world, it came fast and quickly replaced organic materials like banana leaf and wood. It is in the culture to to toss materials on the floor, in the rivers and sea regardless of what it is made of
• Often, the tap water is not drinkable so they rely on bottled water
• Initiatives to reduce plastic waste is not on any agenda here

OK, so that's their problem to fix, they created the mess so its on them to fix it?   WRONG!  Over-consumption of plastic in the west is directly contributing to the problem.  

In my country, the UK, people are pretty good about putting plastic in recycling so they've done their part to help the environment.  But, investigations have shown that only around 20% of items actually get recycled and plastic is even less than that. This is partly down to the process of filtering recyclable waste but also because recycled plastic has not yet reached the tipping point of it being a commercial viable product.

UK and most countries in the western world produces more waste than the system can handle. For decades this waste has been sold to countries that would take it, such as Indonesia, India, China and Malaysia.   These countries have taken short-term profit over long term protection. 

In short. Without even knowing, we are part of the problem.

Are we affected by it though?  I often walk along beaches in UK and see very little trash. 

But, if plastic in the sea continues to increase, it will be washing up at shores near you soon, be sure of that.

In Manado, it really hit me hard how such a naturally beautiful place could be plagued with this problem.  It made me really sad, with very little hope but it made me determined to make a difference!

Fast Forward ⏩ Manado, Sulawesi in 2025 - Hope for the future 💙

The beauty of Manado, the coral reefs and islands in the surrounding area has drawn me back.  It is also a place I have highlight where I can help contribute to making a real difference. The sea, the islands, the marine life and the people deserve every bit of help they can get and I am going to do everything in my power to be part of that.

I arrived 6 weeks ago and I knew what to expect based on previous times but I can say that I have been pleasantly surprised.

It is not going to change overnight, what has struck me is there is a shift in the attitudes of more people. There are more bins, more people are using them, more people are aware of the trash problem and more people are realising they don't want their beaches and waters full of trash. 

Furthermore, there looks to be a shift in attitude at state level too.  Shockingly, microplastics have been found in rainwater in Indonesia recently and the government has taken note. 

In 2025, they banned the import of trash from other countries

They are looking into recycling projects that could further make 

It is a step in the right direction for sure.

 

No-Trash Triangle Initiative

Whilst visiting an Bangka Island, north of Manado, I learned about the No-Trash Triangle Initative

I was amazed by the work they were doing:

• Beach and river cleanups
• Setting up their own waste management solution for 2 of the islands, that means local people have their waste collected each week
• Setting up a processing plant in Manado, where all of the waste is cleaned and sorted
• Having the logistics set up to transport the materials to Java, where it is recycled
• Installing trash barriers in the Manado rivers to stem the tide of trash ending up in the sea
• Building a team of passionate employees and volunteers to carry out these jobs
• Providing community outreach and education programs to educate and involve local communities
• Going to local schools and providing education to the children that will allow them to make the biggest positive impact in generations

Some facts

• They fill an entire shipping container with processed trash every 2 weeks to send to Java for Processing
• In 2024, the collected over 26 Tonnes of trash from the islands and beach cleanups
• And over 52 Tonnes of trash from rivers

Please take a look at what they are doing, follow them, support them, share their work with people and take the hope they bring forward

 https://www.no-trashtriangle.org/

https://www.instagram.com/notrashtriangle/ 

When a problem seems too big to tackle, doing something is always going to be better than doing nothing!