Constant, este Coastal Cleanup

When my husband asked us to join “Tracking Trash”, Shell’s initiative in support of the 27^th International Coastal Cleanup last October 6, this Cebuana imagined a white sand beach, maybe rocky, littered with plastic and the odd debris here and there.

Instead, I found it dark, pebbled and lined with shanties.  The site that Shell chose was near its refinery in Tabangao, Batangas and home to a small settlement.

(from left) Shell executives Jay Javier, Conrad Parizal and
Cesar Abaricia wait for the Shell contingent
at the assembly area.

I was amazed at Shell’s preparations. We were given a hearty breakfast then sent off with bottled water to the assembly area in Barangay Tabangao Aplaya, where the staff briefed us on how to conduct and document the cleanup. Each team was given a data sheet, gloves, sack and sharp sticks for trash pickup.

There were other volunteers already at the site, most of them students from nearby Tabangao Elementary School and their energy was infectious.  They were laughing and shouting and urging each other on. Some were already pulling sacks full of garbage that were as big as they were, stopping to rest every now and then.

As far as these kids are concerned, coastal cleanups are fun.

This got my daughter restless and wanting to start, so we decided not to wait for the rest of the Shell contingent that was coming in from Manila.  We were led onto the seawall, past houses constructed against it, and down into an expanse of dark pebbles and sand that was the only thing that stood between the sea and the shanties nearby.

It was fun at first since we poked around near the water’s edge, which was relatively clean. We also saw some women digging around in the sand for some shell food, which we found novel and interesting.

But when we went further inland, where the river flowed out into the sea, we came closer to the shanties.  I had to caution against tallying every single bit since the garbage was in pieces, some recognizable as plastic bags, food packaging, shampoo sachets, tin cans, broken glass, broken plates and utensils.  We would log in one piece only if we figured we had enough to actually form one piece, say, a plastic bag.

By then, volunteers from Shell Shared Business Service Center (SBSC) had arrived and they were having the same dilemma. “Ila-log in ba ito isa-isa? (Do we have to log in every single piece)” I overheard one of them ask. “Hirap naman nito. Kailangan bang i-record? (This is hard. Do we really have to make a record)” asked another.

My husband and I try to get rid of this pile, but most of it
is deeply embedded in the sand. 

Once the data sheets were filled up, they were to be submitted to Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit organization based in Washington D.C. that has been working for over 40 years to conserve the world’s oceans, protect communities that depend on its health and care for all wildlife that call it home.

We were soon perspiring. There were clothes, bags, umbrellas, twine, net, part of a sofa  and even some unmentionables. My daughter initially laughed at the items listed in the data sheet. “Why would we find a diaper?” she asked.  Well, we found diapers and then some.

A resident saw me tugging uselessly against a net that had become deeply embedded in the sand and told me that I needed a shovel.  He also complained that the water was going farther and farther inland during high tide.  I stared at him.

I couldn't tell him that if the mangroves had been left to flourish, they would have formed a natural protective barrier against the sea, especially during typhoons. Instead, there was this expanse where the mangroves used to be, and on it, people like him were building homes.

The mangroves would have formed a nursery for crabs, fish and other sea life, providing food.  If cutting of the wood had been regulated, it would have provided timber for fuel and even for building small houses.

How can there be so much garbage? my daughter asks. 

But little was left of the mangroves. Instead, the water was creeping in, slowly solidifying and burying the wastes the people had dumped on the sand. As one volunteer said, “Bulldozer yata ang kailangan dito (this place needs a bulldozer).”

I was thus appreciative of the fact that Shell was capping the cleanup with a mangrove awareness lecture for 50 selected students of Tabangao Elementary School. That’s right, start them young, I thought.  After all, this was why we’d also brought along our nine-year-old daughter to the cleanup.

If anybody can change the world, it would be the next generation and the generation after that.  Meanwhile, this generation does what it can, even if efforts like coastal cleanups don’t quite turn out the way we imagined them.