Help Make an Island Plastic Free

A big hello and massive thank you for supporting our project! We have been overwhelmed by your response and will make the most of the trust you’ve put in us. Our education program has already been running in Bali for three years, we have worked with 14 schools and educated over 3600 students and teachers in Indonesia. Thanks to your kind donations, our expansion to Nusa Lembongan has begun! We wanted to send you an update and let you know what we’ve been up to.

We first visited Nusa Lembongan in April 2016 when we were invited to celebrate Earth Day with the community and like-minded organisations. The village of Lembongan has the support and leadership of their village head Pak Ketut Arjaya, who is interested in addressing plastic pollution. On this small island, the issue of plastic waste in our oceans is stark, as the local community relies on subsistence fishing and tourism such as diving, snorkeling and surfing. Lembongan lies in the middle of the coral triangle, and has a distinct and diverse eco-system, with almost 250 species of reef and 560 species of marine wildlife. This ecosystem and the local businesses are all under threat from plastic pollution. Pak Arjaya contacted schools in his village to encourage them to join our program. We were very excited that three schools were keen to begin the program!

We have held two workshops and trained 18 school staff, ensuring the whole school community understands plastic waste issues and the practical steps they can take to reduce plastic pollution. At the end of the workshops, staff were given a stainless steel water bottle and two of the three schools have received their water refill stations so they can begin refilling their bottles at school. Year Five and Six classes at each school have taken part in our design competition for this years’ bottles.

Five teachers have been trained to teach our eight lesson environmental education program. We have provided lesson plans and powerpoint presentations for each class, and workbooks for each student. Once each class completes the course, students will be given a water bottle. We have monitoring and evaluation processes in place so that we, and the schools, can learn the impact of our program.

It is thanks to your support that we have been able to extend our program to more remote areas. We’re completely stoked to bring our program to Nusa Lembongan. Thank you from us, the students and teachers!

Check out our crowdfunding page, follow our blog, and join in the conversation on social media! We’ll continue to share updates in our quarterly newsletter.

All the best from the Bottle for Botol team!