It's time to wake up

I love Indonesia. I've been coming to Java and Bali for the last 30 years. The people, the cuisine, the weather and of course the surf are all amazing. I have always been conscious, however, of the pressure on the environment. You just have to take a trip to Jakarta to understand the sheer enormity of the place and the amount of people.

This trip to Bali has been a massive wake up call for me personally. On the second day we awoke to the beach absolutely covered in plastic. It's not something you can easily forget. When you go for a surf and end up tangled in plastic and a used nappy, it makes you lose the urge to go back out there. When you are confronted with raw sewerage in the water near your hotel for days on end, it makes you lose the urge to swim again.

One obvious problem is all the big bits of plastic like single use cups and straws, but even more so are all the tiny pieces which are impossible to gather. The styrofoam, the beads, the plastic that has broken up. These are likely entering the food-chain where they will have an irreversible effect on the environment. If this much has washed up on one beach of one island, just image how much is in the ocean.

My fear is it is too late. My hope is that we can do something about it. We've spent the first three days of our holiday picking up plastic and putting it in a bins (which appear to be hardly ever used). We take recycling pretty seriously in our household. But it is not enough. Not nearly. We all need to take responsibility now and that can only be done through legislation. The first step is banning all single use plastics, which has now happened in Bali, but not yet Australia. You can start by signing this petition here.

When legislation kicks in, industry will come up with new and creative ways to help reduce waste. We have become lazy; have chased the big bucks at the expense of the environment and/or continued to think it is someone else's problem. People have gotten rich off the back of it and the only reason that legislation won't be brought in is because certain groups may lobby against it, for pure profit. Remember folks, we have an election in the offing...