Sensatia and Seven Clean Seas brought 75 volunteers to Padang Galak Beach, clearing roughly 173 kilograms of waste from the shoreline. The surprise wasn’t the plastic, but everything else the tide left behind.
Beach cleanups tend to conjure a familiar picture: a few volunteers, a handful of bottle caps, and the odd orphaned flip-flop. At Padang Galak Beach, where Bali-based skincare brand Sensatia teamed up with ocean conservation organisation Seven Clean Seas on 19 September, the picture turned out to be considerably heavier.
With seventy-five participants, Sensatia employees working shoulder to shoulder with members of the local community, cleared approximately 173 kilograms of waste from the shoreline. The breakdown is where things get interesting. Plastic, the usual villain of these stories, accounted for just 35 kilograms, while organic matter came to 41. The largest share by some distance, 97 kilograms, was residual waste (the unglamorous category of items that can be neither recycled nor composted, and so tend to stay exactly where they are dropped). It makes a quietly persuasive case for the day’s second aim: encouraging responsible waste management and cutting waste at its source, rather than simply collecting it once the tide delivers it.
For Sensatia, the choice of beach was personal. “Padang Galak is part of the community around Sensatia, so it is important for us to contribute directly,” says founder and CEO Michael Lorenti. The effort also fell within the International Coastal Cleanup period, the global initiative that rallies communities to protect their beaches and coastal areas, though this particular outing was organised independently. Lorenti is modest about its scale. “A beach cleanup is only one small action,” he notes, “but small actions become meaningful when people take them together.”
Divide the haul by the headcount and it comes to just over two kilograms per person, or roughly the weight of a well-stocked tote bag. On its own, that may not sound like much. Multiply it across a community, a coastline, and enough ordinary days, however, and the arithmetic starts to tell a different story.
Sensatia
Jalan Danau Tamblingan, Sanur
Bali 80228, Indonesia
T: (+62) 81246588352
W: sensatia.com
