While not an encompassing or ‘one-size-fits all’ approach, beach clean-ups are better than the alternative of not tackling the issue of marine debris as they raise awareness about the scale of the plastic problems and help communities conceptualise new solutions to tackle the issue at hand.

As beach clean-ups are hands-on, participatory activities, they influence behavioural change by education participants on how they can be more mindful of their own plastic waste. Moreover, beach clean-ups also contribute to an increasing corpus of knowledge that informs communities of the trajectory of marine debris, and helps scientists identify global leakage points where plastic waste is in abundance.

Furthermore, beach clean-ups can also add further granularity by identifying the world’s primary plastic polluters such as Coca Cola, Nestle and PepsiCo. This paves the way for consumers and activities to engage these producers on limiting their plastic production and making the switch to more sustainable alternatives (Parker, 2018).

It is precisely this resolve that spurred Sam Thian to launch her ground-up initiative, East Coast Beach Plan to tackle the issue of marine debris that was piling up on Singapore’s beaches during COVID-19. By creating a Telegram group, she galvanised hordes of eager locals who devote their time to cleaning up Singapore’s beaches on a daily basis! In a time where plastic is king, it is heartwarming that local efforts like this exist to mitigate its pervasiveness. Check out some photos below of the amazing work done by the volunteers 🙂

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