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Bye Bye Plastic Bags
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"Welcome to Bali", the Balinese sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen
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say, hands pressed together in the Balinese greeting gesture. "Do
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you have any plastic bags to declare?" The sisters ask visitors this
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question when arriving at Bali's International Airport. Melati and
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Isabel dream of a day when plastic bags will be illegal in Bali. "We
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want people to arrive on the island and there will be no plastic
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bags", Melati says.
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In the old days Balinese people only used organic materials
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leaving no waste behind. But today the island is covered with
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rubbish. Much of the rubbish in Bali is not collected, some of it is
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burnt and pollutes the air heavily, some is simply dumped in
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rivers. “In Bali we produce 680 cubic metres of plastic a day as
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nearly everything you buy is packed in plastic bags. That’s the
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size of a fourteen-storey building,” Isabel says. “Unfortunately,
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less than five per cent of the plastic bags get recycled.”
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Worldwide, plastic is a threat to wildlife. Plastic bags cause the
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death of fish and other animals. Just recently a whale was found
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with over 80 plastic bags in its stomach. It died because the
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plastic had made it impossible for the whale to hunt and eat.
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Before it died it had been in pain for several days.
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At the age of 10 and 12, Melati and Isabel had a lesson at Green
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School in Bali about change makers like Nelson Mandela, Martin
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Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and asked themselves, “What
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can we do as kids on the island of Bali to make the world a better
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place?” They knew rubbish was a big problem in Bali which
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seemed impossible to solve. And then they found out that
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Rwanda, a country in Africa, had banned plastic bags in 2008. “If
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one of the poorest countries succeeded in doing that, Bali should
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start to act as well,” Melati says. So the sisters decided not to wait
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until they were older.
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That is why they founded the campaign Bye Bye Pastic Bags.
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They collected thousands of signatures, organized beach
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clean-ups and school presentations. The girls were even invited to
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give a video talk for a famous Internet channel in London and they
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have inspired Bye Bye Plastic Bags campaigns all over the world.
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Although well-known by then, it was a challenge for them to get
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the attention of the Balinese governor, who did not take the matter
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seriously at first. For one and a half years, Melati and Isabel tried
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to meet him – without any success. “We handed in thousands of
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signatures, but there was no reaction,” Melati says. Then, on a trip
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to India they gave a walk and visited the home of Mahatma
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Ghandi, who had reached his goals through peaceful actions like
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marches and hunger strikes in the 1940s. Having learned about
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the power of hunger strikes, the girls – still frustrated as there had
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been no reaction by the governor – decided to start a hunger
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strike themselves. It was successful because of a huge reaction
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on social media and twenty-four hours later the governor agreed
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to help. He even sent the police to escort Melati and Isabel to his
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office and was proud of them in the end.
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Melati and her sister believe that the voice of the youngest
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generation should receive a larger response. “We are the future
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but we are here now and we are ready. We’ve learned kids can do
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things. We can make things happen.”
From: Jewel Topsfield, Sydney Morning Herald, 03/2016; www.smh.com.au/world/bali-tourists-bagged-to-support-girls-monumental-plastic-rubbish-goal-20160111-gng8xs.htlm; Jacopo Prisco, The teenagers getting plastic bags banned in Bali , CNN, 08/2017; https://edition.cnn.com/2017/08/16/asia/melati-isabel-wijsen-bali/index.html