Littering is sadly, still a common practice among local villagers and loads of rubbish can be spotted along Kinabatangan River during river cruises. We decided to do a ‘River Clean-up’ awareness activity on 16 March 2017 from 9.30am-10.30am involving our SRL staff, in which, many of them are locals too. By doing this, we’re not only educating our collaborators, but also all the villagers who saw us picking the rubbish in the river banks around their housing area.
We had 17 volunteers for the activity (some could not participate because of their working schedule and high demand of the lodge during this time) who truly engaged with the cause. It was good to see their great team work and enthusiasm to participate.
Three teams were formed with one monitor by boat (to make sure rules were followed and to control time). In only one hour, 111.5 Kg of rubbish were collected in the surrounding areas of the lodge. The winning team was team no. 2, who collected 10 bags of rubbish which added up 55.8 kg of garbage. The other two teams collected 6 bags each, which was around 30 kg per team.
The most common materials found were plastic bottles, polystyrene containers as well as shampoo and detergent bottles. But among all of those, we also found many clothes, slippers, rubber boots, tires, metal cans, one dismantled TV and also a computer! Fortunately, most of the trash we collected were able to be sent off for recycling, which brought about an even greater positive impact!
Before our monthly sustainability talk the following day, all the teams were congratulated for their effort. The winning team received a ‘Sustainable Kit’ which includes a SRL reusable bag, one reusable water bottle and one reusable food container while all the other participants received a reusable food container. In addition to that, everyone received a ‘Friend of Sustainability Certificate’ as a token of appreciation for their cooperation and participation. These prizes are also a way to promote awareness and to make them understand the importance of the 3 R’s: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Hopefully, events like this will continue to happen in the future, helping to heal our planet Earth and educating the present generations.
Again, congratulations to all!
| Team 1 | Team 2 | Team 3 |
| Jamil | Hussin | Nasirun |
| Sabrina | Alawi | Jahiran |
| Steven | Crislina | Charity |
| Florina | Aloy | Hafizah |
| Hassan | Natsumi | |
| Monitor: Filipa | Monitor: Mas | Monitor: Suhailie |