BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

A TOTAL of 128 volunteers managed to collect 2,062 kilogrammes (kg) of waste at the Tungku Beach in a cleaning campaign organised by the Beach Bunch to mark Earth Day yesterday.

Speaking to The Brunei Times, Beach Bunch President Rizan Latif said it was the group’s first clean-up this year, held in commemoration of the Earth Day.

He said that Tungku Beach was chosen as the location because it represents “the debilitating condition between human and nature that now creates chaos”.

“Beaches like the Tungku Beach is being used daily and we want to raise public awareness to ensure that the beach is always kept clean,” said Rizan.

He added that it was a positive event as “128 people came and were committed to say no to a dirty beach”.

He said with the recent revamp of Serasa beach, beach visitors and business owners have moved to Tungku beach, resulting to large number of visitors on weekends and their litter.

“Beach Bunch wants to create a better image of Tungku beach as well as to educate visitors for a more pleasant environment,” he said.

“It’s more like contributing back to the community and it’s a stand to tell that for Beach Bunch, littering is not the way to go and we must be responsible,” he continued.

When asked why the bad habit is still practised by irresponsible beach goers, Rizan said it’s because people have this ‘someone will clean it up’ mindset.

“Some people may see that the place is already dirty, so [they] might as well just litter. Others may want to be responsible but there are no allocated trash bins around the site so they litter. But the worst is the “someone else will clean it up” mindset that some people have,” he said.

Rizan added that while changing the mindsets of these irresponsible individuals is difficult, it is not impossible as various steps have been taken to create awareness about the effects of littering.

“We’ve held a couple of awareness sessions at schools and carried out a series of beach cleaning campaign so people can take part and be more aware,” he said.

Various schools, colleges and private companies came to support the clean-up, including International School Brunei (ISB), Politeknik Brunei, Institut Teknologi Brunei (ITB), Yayasan Secondary School, Mashhor Group Sdn Bhd, Takaful Brunei Darussalam and Standard Chartered Bank.

The Brunei Times