Unit 8: Melati and Isabel Wijsen:

Our Campaign to Ban Plastic Bags in Bali

M: Bali-island of gods.

I: A green paradise, or a paradise of lost. Bali- island of garbage. In Bali, we

generate 680 cubic meters of plastic garbage a day. That’s about a 14-story
building. And when it comes to plastic bags, less than 5 % gets recycled.

M: We know that changes the image you may have our island. It changes ours, too,
when we learned about it, when we learned that almost all plastic bags in Bali end
up in our drains and then in our rivers and then in our ocean. And those that don’t
even make it to the ocean, they’re either burned or littered.

I: So we decided to do something about it. And we’ve been working for almost 3
years now to try to say no to plastic bags on our home island. And we have had
some significant successes.

M: We are sisters and we go to the best school on earth: Green School, Bali. Green
School is not only different in the way that it is built out of bamboo, but also in the
way that it teaches. We are taught to become leaders of today, something a
normal textbook cannot match.

I: One day, we had a lesson in class where we learned about significant people, like
Nelsen Mandela, Lady Diana, and Mahatma Gandhi. Walking home that day, we
agreed that we also wanted to be significant. Why should we wait until we were
grown up to be significant? We wanted to do something now.

M: Sitting on the sofa that night, we brainstormed and thought of all the issues facing
Bali. And one thing that stood out to us the most was the plastic garbage. But that is
a huge problem. So we looked into what was a realistic target for us kids: plastic
bags. And the idea was born.

I: We started researching, and let’s just say, the more we learned, there was nothing
good about plastic bags. And you know what? We don’t even need them.

M: We were really inspired by the efforts to say no to plastic bags in many other
places, from Hawaii to Rwanda and to several cities like Oakland and Dublin.
I: And so the idea turned into the launch of “Bye Bye Plastic Bags.”

M: In the years that we have been campaigning, we have learned a lot. Lesson
number 1: you cannot do it all by yourself. You need a big team of like-minded kids,
and so we formed the Bye Bye Plastic Bags crew. The volunteer team includes
children from all over the island, from both international and local schools. And
together with them, we started a multi-layered approach, based on an on- and off
line signature petition, educational and inspirational presentations at schools and we
raised general awareness at markets, festivals, beach clean-ups. And last but least,
we distribute alternative bags, bags like net bags, recycled newspaper bags or 100%
organic material bags, all made by local initiative on the island.

I: We ran a pilot village, home of 800 families. The village mayor was our first
friend and he loved out T-shirt, so that helped. We focused on making the
customers aware, because that’s where the change needed to happen. The village
is already two-third along the way of becoming plastic bag free. Our first attempts to
get the government of Bali on board failed. So we thought, “Hmm… a petition with
one million signatures. They can’t ignore us, right?”
M: Right!

I: But, who would have guessed one million signatures is, like, a thousand times a
thousand? We got stuck till we learned lesson number 2: think outside the box.
Someone mentioned that the Bali airport handles 16 million arrivals and departures
a year.

M: But how do we get into the airport? And here comes lesson 3: persistence. Off
we headed to the airport. We got past the janitor. And then it was his boss’s
boss, and then the assistant office manager, and then the office manager, and then…
we got shuffled down two levels and thought, well, here comes the janitor again.
And after several days knocking on doors and just being kids on a mission, we finally
got to the commercial manager of Bali airports. And we gave him the “Bali of plastic
bags” speech, and being a very nice man, he said, ”I cannot believe what’s I’m about
say, but I’m going to give authorization to collect signatures behind customs and
immigrations.”
I: In our first hour and a half there, we got almost 1,000 signatures. How cool is
that? Lesson number 4: You need champions at all levels of society, from
students to commercial managers to famous people. And thanks to the attraction of
Green School, we had access to a steady stream of celebrities. Ban Ki Moon taught
us that Secretary-Generals of the United Nations don’t sign petitions—even kids ask
nicely. But he promised to spread the word, and now we work closely with the
United Nations.

M: Jane Goodall taught us the power of a people’s network. She started with just
one Roots & Shoots group and now she has 4,000 group around the world. We
are one of them. She’s a real inspiration. If you’re a fellow Rotarian, nice to meet
you. We’re interactors, the youngest department of Rotary international.

I: But we have also learned much about patience,

M: how to deal with frustrations,
I: leadership,
M: teamwork,
I: friendship,
M: We learned more about the Balinese and their culture
I: and we learned about the importance of commitment.
M: It’s not always easy. Sometimes it does get a little bit hard to walk your talk.

I: But last year, we did exactly that. We went to India to give a talk, and our
parents took us to visit the former private house of Mahatma Gandhi. We
learned about the power of hunger strikes he did to reach his goals. Yes, by the end
of the tour, when we met our parents again, we both made a decision and said,
“we’re going on a hunger strike!”

M: And you can probably imagine their faces. It took a lot of convincing, and not
only to our parents but to our friends and to our teachers as well. Isabel and I
were serious about doing this. So we met with a nutritionist, and we came up
with a compromise of not eating from sunrise to sunset every day until the
government of Bali would agree to meet with us to talk about how to stop plastic
bags on Bali.

I: Our “mogak makan,”(絕食抗議) as it is called in Bahasa Indonesia, started. We used

social media to support our goal and already on day two, police started to come to
our home and school. What were these two girls doing? We knew we weren’t
making the governor look his best by doing this food strike—we could have gone to
jail. But , hey, it worked.24 hours later, we were picked up from school and escorted
to the office of the governor.
M: And there he was—waiting for us to meet and speak, being all supportive and
thankful for our willingness to care for the beauty and the environment of Bali. He
signed the promise to help the people of Bali say no to plastic bags. And we are now
friends, and on a regular basis, we remind him and his team of the promises he has
made. And indeed, recently he stated and committed that Bali will be plastic bag
free by 2018.

I: Also, at the international Airport of Bali, one of our supporters is planning to start a
plastic bag-free policy by 2016.

M: Stop handing out free plastic bags and bring in your own reusable bag is our next
message to change that mindset of the public.

I: Our short-term campaign, “One Island / One voice,” is all about this. We check
and recognize the shop and restaurants that have declared themselves a plastic bag-
free zone, and we put tis sticker at their entrance and publish their names on social
media and some important magazines on Bali. And conversely, that highlights
those who do not have the sticker.

M: So, why are we actually telling you all of this? Well, partly, it is because we are
proud of the results that, together with our team, we have been able to reach. But
also because along the way, we have learned that kids can do things. We can make
things happen. Isabel and I were only 10 and 12 years old when we started this.
We never had a business plan, nor a fixed strategy, nor any hidden agendas—just the
idea in front of us and a group of fiends working with us. All we wanted to do was
stop those plastic bags from wrapping and suffocating our beautiful home. Kids
have a boundless energy and a motivation to be the change the world needs.

I: So to all the kids of this beautiful but challenging world: go for it. Make that
difference. We’re not telling you it’s going to be easy. We’re telling you it’s
going to be worth it. Us kids may only be 25% of the world’s population, but we
are 100% of the future.

M: We still have a lot of work to do, but know that we still not stop until the first
question asked when arriving at the Bali airport will be
M & I: “Welcome to Bali, do you have any plastic bags to declare?” Om shanti
shanti shanti om. Thank you.