3.7 tonnes of trash picked up in Kranji mangrove clean-up

By Bridgette See, Channel News Asia, 13 September 2003 1619 hrs (SST)

Couches, TVs, stuffed toys, and even mattresses these were some of the discarded items picked up during Saturday morning's coastal cleanup at three mangrove sites.

At Kranji mangrove, 3.7 tonnes of rubbish was picked in just 90 minutes.

The 330 bags of trash collected from Kranji mangrove will be headed for the incinerators.

Student volunteers spent the day treading amongst fragile mangrove roots to free them of trash. "We've got a lot of tubes, a lot of plastic bags, of course, and plastic straws," one volunteer said.

"There's a lot of dirt and I realised that Singapore is quite dirty; it's not that clean, so we have to do our part," another said.

"The annual clean up, the ultimate objective is that there's nothing to clean but that's an idealistic dream. We have tonnes and tonnes of marine trash out there that'll take decades to clean," said N Sivasothi, coordinator, International Coastal Clean-Up Singapore.

So it is no surprise that after seven years of cleanup action at Kranji Mangrove, there is still much more to be done.

There are still large tracts of mangrove awash with debris, most of which comes from land and not from the sea.

And this has prompted some organisers to think about having this coastal cleanup more than once a year. Beyond clearing rubbish, volunteers also took note of what was thrown away.

The data is available at this website; it is clear that 90 percent is still plastic waste.

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