Gili Eco Trust Beach Clean - Gili Trawangan

When it comes of things to do on your holiday, picking up trash probably isn't one of them.

But the Gili Islands is a place like no other, and week in week out, tourists show up and join in with locals and the Gili Eco Trust to help keep the beaches of the Gili Trawangan trash free.

Trash washes in from the ocean, but it also comes from being thrown away, with many people here still burning and discarding their waste. It's an uphill struggle that the Gili Eco Trust have been tackling for years, the progress is evident but theres still plenty to be done.

Every Friday at 5pm the Gili Eco Trust in collaboration with businesses on the island organise a beach clean. This weeks was with The Exile, perhaps the most authentic place to watch the sunset on the island (with the exception of a few more tables, The Exile hasn't changed in the ten years I've been coming here!).

The beach cleans last about an hour and you'll learn a bunch about what can and can't be recycled here on the island. You'll also be rewarded at the end by the collaborating business with a refreshment.

A beer for picking up some rubbish, does Friday night start any better??

The stats: 

In just under an hour about 20 of us collected a massive 81kg off the beach.

28kg of recycling

22kg of glass bottles

31kg of trash

Single use food containers are one of the biggest polluters in Indonesia, the polystyrene containers wash up all over the place and on this beach clean, we picked up 110 of them. It's madness that companies here still use polystyrene for their packaging, but then so do many takeaways in the UK. 

There's always a few fun finds and a few shocking ones. Whilst this beach clean only brought in a few flip flops, there's been Fridays where there's been hundreds of flip flops!

There's a lot of plastic water bottles, but that is to be expected in a place where you cannot drink the water from the tap. Refill culture is growing though and there are plenty of places to refill your water bottle on the island.

If you're in the Gili Islands and would like to get involved, check out Gili Eco Trust or pop by the dewerstone store for more information on where and when the next clean is.

Sians relentless enthusiasm for picking up trash and making the world a better place is infectious.

We'll continue to support the Gili Eco Trust through making t shirts, contributing through 1% for the Planet and getting our staff in Indonesia out on the ground with them in any way we can.

Oral hygiene is so important, who throws away a perfectly good toothbrush?!