It was a successful day of un-trashing the beaches and reefs near the Downbelow dive station and we’re happy to report that Gaya island is cleaner.

A big ‘well done’ to Downbelow for organising this event, mentioned a few days ago, to Sabah Parks for assisting in transport, jetty fees and park fees, and to Project AWARE for the sponsorship to make it happen.

But the heroes of the day were the people, divers and non-divers alike, who gave their time and put in so much effort.  Thanks to them a part of one of Kota Kinabalu’s biggest islands, Pulau Gaya, is now much cleaner and the reefs the better.

The day started not too early as we departed the Sabah Parks jetty from near the Hyatt in KK city.  It took 3 boat-trips to ferry all the volunteers to the Downbelow dive station, which is located on the grounds of Sabah Park’s Headquarters on Gaya Island.

Following a briefing and a few short speeches by Ev from Downbelow and the Director of Sabah Parks, the 40 odd participants were separated into divers and non-divers, and further broken up into clean-up crews.

Armed with our tools, consisting of hard-knit gloves and plastic bags, for the beach dwellers and net-bags for the divers, we set out for some serious cleaning.  The divers got kitted up for diving on some of Kota Kinabalu’s most colourful reefs, whilst the beach squad dispersed along the beach and into the forest.

I was part of the beach clean-up crew and we quickly discovered where the tide and current preferred to dump the glass bottles, plastic bags, pieces of building wood, and all sorts of other colourful trash, which will be around long after the rest of us are on this planet no longer.  We spent the next couple of hours removing the said items from under rocks, wedged in sand, off the branches of low hanging trees and from under shrubs.

Soon a big and heavy pile of rubbish was collected. Heavy, because there were so many glass bottles, and partly because most of the plastic bag trash were filled with sand before we emptied them.  Before long we had filled all the big trash bags we had, and headed back to the meeting point for a well earned break.

Slowly the other clean-up crews joined us with their contributions of trash.  The divers came back with a lot less trash than what we expected, but instead of being disappointed, we took it as a good sign.  Clean reefs, are good reefs.

We had some well received lunch and polished off litres of orange juice and water.  We even had time for a little bit of frisbee throwing (there’s always time for frisbee - and two people brought frisbees along).

Taking pictures of our trophy trash, a brief mangrove tree planting ceremony and Downbelow cap souvenirs closed off the trash collecting proceedings for the day, before we headed back to the mainland again.

The response for the event was overwhelming and I think Ev had to arrange additional transport for all the volunteers that put up their hands to help us clean up.  Thank you very much to everyone who helped - it’s a small squad against the legions of trash out there, but one by one we can make a difference.

If you’re keen to join similar projects in future, keep your eyes on this blog or surf on over to kkdiveclub.com.  If you live in Kota Kinabalu and love diving, join the club for really affordable dive days.

Or if you just visit KK every now and again for a bit of a diving holiday, you can still keep in touch and we’ll invite you along.

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Although we often treat the sea as such, it is in fact not a giant dustbin.  Most of the rubbish dumped by man linger around for years, even decades, and might never go away.

In fact, in Kota Kinabalu, our bad habbits frequently come back to haunt us.  The rubbish dumped in the ocean not only washes back up on the shores of 5-star resorts and islands, giving a really bad impression to tourists, but it also gets lodged in reefs damaging coral, and is mistaken as food by hungry sea animals which, if it doesn’t kill them, can seriously hurt them.

So, this Saturday we’re taking a bit back from all those bad things we give the environment as we clean-up our shores and reefs.  Join us for a beach reef clean-up, as Downbelow hosts a Project AWARE event endorsed by Sabah Parks.

Project AWARE is a non-profit organisation that focusses on the importance of our marine environment, and actively encourages the preservation thereof through education, advocacy and action.

This Saturday 20 September, Downbelow Dive Centre moves us towards such action as they provide the infrastructure for this event.

We will be heading out to Sabah Park HQ on Gaya island, and will clean up the beach area, river mouth, and also the reefs nearby.  Both divers and non-divers are welcome, and the event is free to join.

We only had space for about 30 people, so let me know soonest if you’re interested but all the spaces have already been filled, sorry.

Time: 10.30am - 4pm
Depart: Sabah Parks Jetty in front of Hyatt Kota Kinabalu
Where: We’ll be cleaning on Gaya Island at Sabah Park Headquarters
Cost: All it will cost you is a bag or 3 of trash.  Otherwise, it’s FREE! Downbelow Dive Centre provides everything you need, it’s sponsored by Project AWARE and Sabah Parks have kindly waived park & jetty fees for participants of this event.
Included: Return boat transfers to the island, lunch, full equipment rental for those diving, park entrance fees, jetty fees

If you want to be part of the next worthwhile event of its kind and help clean up a part of the Tunkul Abdul Rahman Marine Park, then drop me an email or join the KK Dive Club.

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Warning: this is an environmentally geeky post.

I recycle.  About every 3 months I take a car load of rubbish to the recycling depot and walk away with about RM10 - RM16 for my effort. It’s not about the money though, it’s about the environment.

The majority of my rubbish consists of plastic, specifically plastic bottles.

The tap water here isn’t exactly drinkable (although I believe if your constitution is robust you can get away with it), so I buy bottled water instead of boiling my own.  It’s a toss up, but I reckon recyclable plastic is better than using loads of electricity.

My Personal Impact of Drinking Bottled Water

I buy a box of 12 1.5 litre bottles of reverse-osmosis water every week or so.  It recently increased to RM10 per box, so it costs me 56c a litre (RM 10 / (12 x 1.5) = RM0.56).  The waste from this is 12 large plastic bottles and a cardboard box.

Even if I crush the plastic bottles, over the span of 3 months it accumulates into quite a pile.

I’ve recently noticed the increase of water vending machines here in KK though.  Water Shop, it’s called.

You pay something like 20c and buy yourself a litre of reverse osmosis water, which you collect and take home in your own container.  This, of course, appealed to me as the water is cheaper and with my own container I could reduce my bottled-water related waste to zero.

Until recently though, they’ve all been pretty far away from my house and petrol is way more expensive than plastic or water.

Buying Water from a Vending Machine?

Then environmental activism happened to me. First a Water Shop appeared outside a small shopping plaza near my house, and I serendipitously bumped into 16-litre containers at Giant, perfect for taking your very own reverse osmosis water home in.

So I bought the container for RM65, stopped at the Water Shop on the way home (which btw is “open” 24 hours a day) and filled it up for RM3.70, which at 20c per litre means the container can actually hold close to 19 litres of water. Suits me.

Result? Water Shop chalks up one for the environment, as they contribute to me removing a substantial amount of consumer generated rubbish from the cycle.  Piles of empty plastic bottles and kilograms of cardboard box.  I know, before I recycled the rubbish, so the impact is probably not that great, but recycling also wastes energy and who knows what it gets recycled into.

But it also reduces the demand for plastic bottles and cardboards boxes ever so slightly.  Times that by a few hundred people and the impact could be significant. I like to think I make a small contribution.

And the RM65 container will pay for itself in just over two months.  I save 36c per litre of water, so after 180 litres, or 10 refills, or 10 weeks, I will start saving money on water.

Everyone’s a winner.  I told you it was a geeky post.

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“Earth Hour?”, he says with a muffle as he tries to pry some candy from a sticky wrapper with his lips, “what’s that all about?” He seems almost interested, but then he sticks his hand out the window and drops the candy wrapper and I know he’s only being polite.

“Do you know what planet you’re on?”, I ask with a tone in my voice akin to that you would use to address a dog who just puddled on the carpet.

“Well,” I continue, “this planet is unable to deal with the rubbish that we are discarding into the environment.” He chews his candy with his mouth half open and loud smacking noises. A piece of candy is stuck to his bottom lip.

“We’ve been clogging the environment for years, and”, I pause for dramatic effect which goes unnoticed, “we might already be unable to reverse the damage.” He looks at me and blinks, then chokes, not because of what I’ve said, but because the tangy candy unwittingly created more saliva than he realised and that ran down his windpipe.

“But,” I continue while tears stream down his cheeks, “we have to do whatever we can. And Earth Hour is a tiny step in the right direction.”

But I know it’s like talking to a stack of rice bags. It will make no difference to him. He grew up without direction; without education of what consequence his actions carry. Dropping his paper out the window is as natural to him as burning plastic together with dry leaves in his back yard. Fire. Smoke. And the rubbish is gone. Never mind that it fogs up the entire neighbourhood for hours.

He doesn’t think twice about chucking a bag full of rubbish into the nearby gutter, or pouring the oil he just drained from his 20 year old car’s engine into the storm water pipe. He buys something wrapped in plastic at the store and puts it into a small plastic bag before putting a lot of small plastic bags into several bigger plastic bags, which he will later throw in the gutter or burn in his back yard.

There’s seems to be little incentive from the government to recycle. In fact, there seems to be little incentive to discard rubbish properly at all. In the meantime rubbish wash into the sea and tourists have to wade through it when they participate in water sports, or the ferry to the island has to stop to clear plastic from the engine, or when they see it while snorkelling on the chocking reefs.

He doesn’t realise that when he drops that wrapper out the window he’s adding to the destruction of the tourism industry that is the lifeblood of his tour company.

He’ll go home tonight and switch on every air-con unit in his house. The fancy array of 100w back-lights sets the mood in his living room, the 2000w halogen spotlights on the exterior of his house ensures that his shiny burglar-bars are visible to criminals in nearby countries. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere? He paid for the electricity, he doesn’t care.

“So how long will this Earth Hour last?”, he says picking at the piece of candy stuck to his lip. I hum Heal The World in my head.

A Small Step in the Right Direction

Kota Kinabalu took one of those small steps on Saturday when Earth Hour was observed for the first time here. The Loft in KK’s Waterfront played host to this event that started in Sydney last year.

There they managed to get 2.2 million people and 2,100 business involved and figured out that if that amount of people participated for only one hour every day for a year by switching off their lights, it would be like removing nearly 49,000 cars from the roads for a whole year.

KK’s Earth Hour was a little smaller than that, but considering that only a few days of organisation went into the event, the turn-out was quite astounding. The Loft was literally packed from the front right through and out the back.

Guys were strumming their guitars to hundreds of candles, every seat was occupied for the entire duration of the ‘black out’ from 8am to 9pm. Simon dressed up as a Roman Candle and conducted an environment centric quiz and Helle and Becky, the organisers, handed out of bags of prizes, some sponsored by WWF who provided materials and information on environmental issues.

Small effort, but a big impact. If only everybody would realise how desperately our planet needs these small gestures on a regular basis. Governments won’t do it, hell, it costs too much. Rather milk the Earth for what it’s worth until it’s gone. Most people in top government positions will be dead before the Earth becomes unliveable, so they don’t care much; it seems.

But for the rest of us, if we don’t do something ourselves, we will have nobody else to blame.

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Here’s a worthwhile cause - Earth Hour.

Our planet is in trouble, you know it, I know it. The people in government of the countries who pollute the most know it, yet nobody seems to do anything about it. Too much and too little rain, droughts, floods, winter in summer, summer in winter. The climate is sick an it’s us humans who are doing it.

But what can I, the little guy, do? You might be surprised how a little gesture can literally make the world of difference.

Earth Hour was first observed in Sydney last year. Australia is one of the top four biggest polluting nations in the world, but their citizens are inflicting the most radical policy change in government of any of the big polluters.

The idea behind Earth Hour is a simple one; for 1 hour on one day of the year, simply switch off the lights. Of course, go ahead an switch off all the electricity. Last year in Sydney 2.2 million people participated in this event. 2,100 business where in on the deal and even the lights on the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House were switched off on 31 March, between 8pm and 9pm.

The effect from Sydney alone, they said, if sustained throughout the year (only one hour per day), would be equivalent to removing 48,000 cars from the road for one whole year.

Continue below…

Last year it was only in Sydney, but this year it’s global and here in Kota Kinabalu there will also be an event. Becky and Helle are hosting an Earth Hour event at The Loft in KK’s Waterfront this Saturday, 29 March. Between 8pm and 9pm the lights will go out and if you want to join to show your support and commitment to reducing global warming, then be there.

They’ve organised acoustic music entertainment and there will be a quiz with prizes, so make sure you know the facts about global warming.

If you’re keen to be part of Earth Hour, register your commitment. You can also view a map of the earth which depicts where people are committing. There’s a list of countries and how many people have enlisted and if you want to host your own Earth Hour event, you can register for that too.

If everyone does a little, the effect will be a lot. It really is that simple.

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