ecoTalk: Ni Made Dwi Septiantari – ecoBali Education Coordinator
Monday, 27th August 2018 at 02:29:53
The thing about waste…
… Is that we produce it. Other living beings produce waste that can degrade naturally, while our “waste”, plastic, is the complete opposite and becomes a pollution. Taking care of our environment is a form of our responsibility to ourselves and to the environment.
Tell us the worst waste experience you’ve gone through yourself?
Swimming in the ocean and being bombarded with plastic waste.
What’s Your Action?
When I’m right there on location, I will clean up the beaches. And in my capacity as Education Coordinator for ecoBali, it gives me great pleasure to be able to go to schools and impart green knowledge to children. I have a teacher’s degree, but it’s different being a teacher and an educator: as a teacher you’re limited by the curriculum and syllabus that you’re given, while being an educator in ecoBali I get to have more freedom and it’s definitely more in line with my passion so I’m really happy when I’m out there doing socialization in schools. I really believe that children can be agents of change and it’s really important to teach them to love the environment from an early age as possible.
What’s your biggest challenge?
Stopping the flow of plastics because it’ll keep coming from the rivers, or from the ocean itself. And not everyone wants to help clean it up—a lot of them are rather blasé about it, not seeing it as a problem at all.
What are the first things that you’ll advise people to be more responsible with waste
First of all, don’t litter. If we don’t find any trash bin, then bring it with you until you find one. At least we should just be responsible with our own waste first.
Starting from this August 17th, We should all be independent of…
Single-use plastic straw, because we find a lot of them on the beach.
What’s Next for you?
Personally, I will reduce my own use of single-use plastics—I already carry my own reusable shopping bag, as well as my own spoon and fork with me at all times. And professionally, I would love to get more opportunities to help or collaborate with local communities to form a waste bank as a way to reduce waste on the island.
