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Protecting the Beaches of Brunei

Categories: East Asia, Brunei, Environment, Youth

The Beach Bunch Association was established [1] to “sustain and protect the beaches [2] of Brunei from pollution.” Some of the activities of the group include the following:

We organise and conduct cleaning campaigns regularly on Brunei beaches

We organise and conduct awareness programs on waste management on the beaches

We promote reduction in waste generation in particular plastic bottles and plastics bag

We provide environmental education programs through public, private and educational institutions

Beach Bunch also taps the power of social media to gather more support from the public. Aside from its website, it also has Facebook [3] and Twitter [4] accounts.

One of its projects include a mapping [5] of Brunei beaches:

[5]

Google Map of Brunei Beaches

Another mapping project involves the identification of the location, services offered and situation of the beaches in the country.

[5]

A coastal clean up [6] was recently organized [7] where 150 volunteers from various schools participated. According to the organizers, “a total of 418.5 kilogrammes of waste were collected, out of which 100 kgs were plastic, one and a half kgs of aluminium and 317 kgs of non-recyclable waste.”

The volunteers [8] wrote about their participation on Facebook:

Harold Raps: Yeah! Had a great time! Helped with something good and met some great people! Best thing was that the beach looked so much cleaner afterwards!

Anthony Er: Well Done, BB. It only takes a spark to get this fire of cleanliness going. Impressed with the big turn-out. Congrats also to Rizan Latif and the rest of the BB organizers. Bravo !

[9]

Beach Bunch Clean-up event

[10]

Volunteers in the beach clean-up drive

Jan Shim [11] was one of the participants of the clean up event [12]:

I think you would have a lot of fun as I did covering this international anniversary beach clean-up event. I cannot imagine how this much crap could end up on the beach and how, evidence from photos, fishermen could leave nets conveniently washed up to the beach to be cleaned up by others.

Beach Bunch collected the photos [13] which will be part of an international database:

We believe that no matter where we live, the ocean is our life support system. That's why we're teaming up with Ocean Conservancy, Project Aware and Clean-up the World to help keep our ocean and waterways clean. The data collected will be uploaded into an international database. This is the 2nd time Beach Bunch participate on such a world event.