As a young German, the Paradise wants to save

January 8, 2019

The dream of the clean world endures seas only up to just after half past nine. Previously, from the Breakfast table of the dive resorts Baba Lagoon, everything looks still to the tropical idyll. The hot Wind blows through the 20-Meter-high coconut trees, the incline from the shore of the island of Banda Neira on the deep blue water. Compared with the dark green cone of the volcano-island of fire mountain, covered with dense rain forest rises up through the black lava flows. At the Pier dive guide will equip your excursion boat with oxygen tanks for the daily Tour. Your area is located in the middle of the diver’s high-valued coral triangle – a place that could easily be described as “Paradise”.

Here in the Banda sea, on the easternmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago, is one of the few intact Ecosystems in the oceans. Hardly anywhere in the oceans, species are so numerous as here, hardly anywhere, the coral reefs are so healthy. However, while the first guests to Board the dive boat, sends the low tide with the run-off water ends the Wake-up call that the death of the oceans begins in places like this: with plastic garbage that is now brightly shining between the volcano and the main island, also the direction of the open sea.

plastic garbage-collection as large as Central Europe

“That comes from our problem corner”, says Mareike Huhn, 33, a PhD marine biologist from Oer-Erkenschwick in the Ruhr area. Armed with two dip nets, contrary to she climbs aboard your boat and chugging the disgusting broth. It smells like fish, rot, and feces. Flip-Flops, wrapped around plastic bags, swim, disposable drinking Cup, and shower bags, fish guts and lighters, coconut shells and nets, hangers and sandals, Oil cans and bottles. The chicken, assisted by two helpers, out of the fish piece by piece and puts the muzzle with dripping Nets on Board.

The Foundation’s star supported the Initiative, in order to secure the livelihood of the people. Please donate to: IBAN DE90 2007 0000 0469 9500 00 BIC DEUTDEHH – keyword “Banda Sea”; www.stiftungstern.de

“It is important to show that someone cares. If you are claiming all the time to do something for the environment, one must also set an example and self-help,” says the young scientist. You require no less from the people here to change centuries-old practices. Traditionally, they are used to dispose of your waste in the sea. As leaves of banana eating was not a Problem. In the age of Plastic, it is a disaster. That is why Mareike chicken began five years ago with her club, “Banda Sea” Banda a garbage disposal to build up Recycling and to introduce environmental education to teach. A very small beginning, in view of the approximately ten million tons of plastic that are tilted around the globe every year into the sea. 80 percent of that comes from people who live near the coast, also from Germany, Spain or the USA. However, on the rankings of the worst polluters in Indonesia is located next to China, with a large gap at the front. On the least of all the 17,508 Islands in the country, a garbage exists in the collection. The next of the world’s five huge collections of plastic garbage in the ocean is also the largest, it has the proportions of the whole of Central Europe.

chicken fight is like a fight against windmills. “But we have to start somewhere, Yes,” she says. And it was on to the spice Islands, ten small Islands, of 20,000 inhabitants to colonial times, the only place in the world where nutmeg trees grew. The nutmeg was used as a remedy against the plague, was once as expensive as Gold. The Islands were so coveted that the Dutch exchanged one of them with the British against Manhattan. Today hardly anyone is interested in the Bandas. Certainly not for the plastic plague that has erupted.

A dedicated teacher

“The best protection is to ensure that no plastic ends up in the sea,” says the chicken, while your boat is struggling through the garbage soup. With tips of fingers, she grabs the bags their prey in brought rice. She turns her head to the side, as she could escape the stench. “Thank God, no diapers are today.” It disgusts. But she is glad that their senses are not yet dulled, even though they sometimes had to go four times a week for trash fish. Sometimes you will ask yourself how you can muster the energy. “But there are also people who have understood it and join in. Without which we would not have started here.”

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The village of Lonthoir, a dream location. But the smoke comes from a waste dump

©Ulet Ifansasti

above All, Magga Fira, 34, a native English teacher. He had tried with his students to arouse awareness of the environment, before the chicken came out five years ago to the island to conduct research for her doctoral thesis on shells. He has discovered from the first collection campaigns, garbage, Handicrafts, student theatre on the topic of staged. At that time, the whole tropical island seemed to be choking on the plastic. Alleys, groves of palm trees, the football field – everything disappeared under a colorful carpet. Especially the one-Meter-deep rain channels were chock-a-block full with plastic waste; any precipitate rinsed it by liters into the sea. Together mobilised chicken and Fira 1000 students for the first “Cleanup Day”, set up trash cans, equipped schools with drinking water dispensers, to the litter from plastic cups to contain. But above all, you have started five years ago together, the first garbage collection of the spice Islands.

“Magga Fira is my Hero”

the chicken makes the volunteer for their Association, funded by your circle of friends and family. Lives of scientific papers for your University in Bochum, scuba diving lessons and conducts field trips for students from Germany. Fira is employed for three years in the Banda Sea. However, as a Volunteer, he had gone in his village of Merdeka from house to house, had explained to his neighbors the difference between organic and inorganic waste; he distributed trash bags and left them all three days of men with a large wheelbarrow pick up again. The first two months it was a Free service, funded by the Banda Sea. Since then, the people will pay voluntarily, because they see the difference. In the meantime, the System works in four villages. “He is my Hero. Without him this would never have been possible”, says Mareike chicken, while on your boat, fill the sacks. The better your garbage disposal works, the less likely you need to get out.

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The filthy beach of Banda Neira, in the middle of the end of children: mountains of plastic garbage in the game are for many people part of your everyday life

©Ulet Ifansasti

but Today is a new moon, the tide the previous night was 70 centimeters higher than the 14 days previously. In particular, in the market district Nusantara hat got the sea, what is there landed on the floor. The flood washed it of beaches, from drainage channels and holes in the crumbling harbour walls. Magga Fira has made already early in the Morning, when he saw the garbage soup, on the way to the market district. Now he is in the port road to distribute bags, collect waste, and speaks with the residents. Men doze in the heat, to look at him, bored. Women wash Laundry in front of your shiny house. To the right and to the left, garbage is piling up. Chickens trudging around cackling.

plastic kills coral, fish and marine mammals

“especially the Elderly, it is difficult to distinguish organically and inorganically,” says Mareike chicken, the controls after an hour of the Pier. A Tattoo on her right foot – a Souvenir of your year Abroad, which she spent as a 16-Year – old in Ghana resembles a staksenden duck. It’s supposed to symbolize the simple, natural life they discovered. The fight for clean seas of the world, she took up with a 21, after you had completed in Thailand on your first diving course. She felt the condition of the waters as shocking, the pollution was, however, still comparatively harmless. In the twelve years that have passed since then, has made the humanity as well as half of all plastic ever produced on earth – and the flooded is now the Bandas. “For many, waste is a part of the natural environment,” says chicken. “You think, what you throw into the sea, then away. But it is only somewhere else.”

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The young plastic bottles from the ocean or picked from the beaches. Their reward: diving goggles and a snorkel course

©Ulet Ifansasti

plastic is choking coral reefs, which can produce up to three times as much oxygen as the rain forest. It kills fish, turtles and marine mammals. Many starve to death, because the plastic-filled stomach is a never-ending, final in the sense of satiety sets in. As in the case of the young sperm whale, its carcass last week at the Spanish coast at Cartagena washed up has been, with 29 kilos of plastic waste in the stomach and intestines. In the year 2050, the forecast is more pessimistic scientists around the world is to swim as much plastic as fish in the sea. Most drives and collects in one of the five huge whirlpool, in which the marine plastic garbage decomposes slowly, and then as the micro-particles to the bottom of the deep sea to sink. Studies on long-term effects are still not very reliable.

A dangerous Illusion

Still want to give some people the impression that the Problem would be comparatively easy to solve. The 23-year-old Dutchman Boyan Slat, for example, wants to remove the swirls monstrous Tentacles to anchor the plastic. Slat bragged about two years ago with the project of the largest ever “Ocean Cleanup”, was that he could get within five years, half of the entire plastic from the largest whirlpool. Technology believers from the Silicon Valley have donated million. Not much more has happened since then. But it’s alive the dangerous Illusion that the garbage is under control. Mareike chicken thinks it’s questionable. You can think of tentacles,. think, you but in use are much more effective at the mouths of rivers that enter sometimes tons of plastic into the sea “It’s little, to act only at the end of the chain, if there is already a lot of damage,” says chicken. Especially do not believe in a quick solution. But the fact that you must act quickly. “The sea provides a good 70 percent of our oxygen. In the end it’s a question of whether humanity can, in the future, breathe.”

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in the Midst of a Spice plantation plastic burned

©Ulet Ifansasti

While chicken and their helpers on the beach to unload their work output, roughly a cubic meter in five bags, climb on the island, a column of smoke over garbage fires. The Wind brought the bears acrid Smoke. Especially from neighborhoods where your garbage disposal still does not work, around the tiny airport, for example. Now, at low tide, the silt, so much garbage is on the ground. At high tide the fishermen have difficulties with your boot, because the plastic is wrapped around the screws of their engines. “When are you coming with your garbage truck to us?” one of them asks. But Magga Fira must put off. With garbage trucks alone, it is not done.

2.40 euros for a large bag Altplastik

“I must educate the people and always be present,” he says. Each year Fira moved with his family in one of the district, to introduce the System. Currently, he lives in the village of Kampoung Baru, where he is also a recycling project, for which he has set up a “garbage Bank”. The equivalent of about 2,40 Euro collector for a large bag Altplastik, the women clean, cut and braiding around the small, colorful purses. The 72-year-old Suni manufactures a day, one bag of lids out of water cups. The paragraph is lively. She earns around 120 euros a month, financed the studies of their daughter. Accordingly, the influx of women of Kampoung of the afternoon in the parish house on the recycling project.

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The 72-year-old Suni manufactures bags and belts made of plastic residues.

©Ulet Ifansasti

“We can sell the purses a friend of mine in Germany,” encouraged Mareike chicken the round. She has already driven three sewing machines from the private stocks, and the world Bank on a program for village development funding for a further eight secured. A shop is planned. As much as possible waste should be recycled. Material is enough. Although the land today, so chicken is estimated that 70 per cent less waste than five years ago in the sea. However, the disposal on Land remains the major Problem. 20 tons month for month alone on the main island. Much too much for the only official dump.

it is situated on a hill, surrounded by banana trees, papaya trees and coconut palms. It smells pathetic. The kokelnde mountain has rolled through the four-metre-high perimeter walls to the middle of the Zugangswegs. Three times in the past year, workers have shoveled out of the way. Now it is littered again. Also because of this new, illegal garbage everywhere on the island tilting. And they grow rapidly.

the Central government in Jakarta is

Mareike chicken sensitized would like to eventually acquire a facility that produces plastic gasoline and Diesel fuel. 20,000 euros would cost the. She collects for her club in Germany. A year ago, she has advanced to the Governor in the regional capital, Ambon, the garbage ship in the shipyard in Kiel-heirs Dirk Lindenau Parkingt. The Governor seemed impressed with the concept, on Board the vessel, the waste is recycled, but then nothing more. However, provincial politicians are now starting to feel that the Central government in Jakarta, at least, is aware. This is partly due to the UN Resolution, the member States threatens to make them before international courts for the pollution of the seas liable. But above all, it has been recognized that tourists do not want to swim in plastic. Videos of scuba divers in Bali, the fight through the garbage forward, endangering the business.

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The former teacher Magga Fira is Mareike chicken main helper

the office of The President, the Indonesian government has decreed that in the case of events, the ministries, no food should be in plastic packaging serving. Only a few days ago, the island of the mayor of the Bandas at the behest has convened a Meeting of the selectmen on the issue of waste, although he has for many years rented the only garbage car of the island private for construction purposes. And after a year of radio silence has to be reported but of those of a provincial Governor in the case of Mareike chicken and for more information about the recycling of ship requested.

The scientist hopes that you can develop your concept with rubbish collection, Recycling to Land on a garbage ship to a global model. But she knows that nothing will happen quickly. “It’s just disaster management remains at the moment,” she says the next day on Board the small ferry to the tiny Banda island of Hatta, an hour and a half away. A photo of the island could decorate the Cover of the book about Robinson Crusoe. Glass is surrounded by clear water, the palm trees, all around of intact coral reef.

coffee and cakes for a crocodile

The last flood has left here on the beach plastic bottles. Some cover Turtle nests. In front of the small house dry muscats. A family has caught a few weeks ago, a crocodile, and in their hut, tied up. She holds it for the reincarnation of the deceased grandfather, given him coffee and cake. A Generator delivers three hours a day of electricity, for three months, a Converter provides at least sporadic cell phone reception. Consumer spending and tourism grow here as in the whole country. The islanders via Facebook packages to order in Internet retailers. The spirit of faith lives as centuries ago. But the plastic garbage that comes in the packages with the packaging, dates back to the year 2018 – that is the Dilemma. Magga Fira was here for a week in order to train the people in dealing with waste from the Modern. “I would have to stay here for a year, in order to convey the. But I can’t be everywhere,” he says. “It will take at least a Generation, until the learning process is completed.” That is why Mareike Huhn has set up here in 2017, an environmental education station to teach the next Generation of environmental awareness.

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Young girl and women demonstrate at the national “Cleanup Day”

“Today, there are the cinema”, is on the panel in front of the yellow house on the beach. Always in the afternoon, so against four, according to the Koran school, the children come to Paint, do Crafts, Read, watch movies, and especially to the common snorkel with Martha, a nurse from Norway, for chicken club here as a Volunteer. Snorkel and mask gives you free of charge. As against this, the children should bring back at least a piece of plastic garbage after the dive. This works quite well. Some make already, flotsam and Jetsam, if you arrive at noon, to fetch the masks.

“people keep the condition for normal, you know from your Childhood,” says chicken in the evening. The educational film on coral is played, the art supplies and books are Packed away, the girls and boys already at home. Mareike chicken would like to receive, that the children of Hatta to fight even for the sea, at least in the way they experience it around their island now. “The dream of a clean world is no utopia seas. It is doable,” she says.

The German biologist sits on the wall behind your accommodation. Just went out in the houses the light, because of the public Generator is now switched off. The sky twinkling stars. Flight dogs hunt through the still hot air. Chicken views out to sea, whose waves beat rhythmically on the shore. Arrow quick lantern fish are to be seen in. In the Plankton on the shore blinking fluorescent particles, fireflies of the sea. In the glow of the moon, a partial tube, the dancing in the Surf shimmers. It is a deodorant stick of the Turkish brand, “She”, model “Sporty”. The inscription promises 24-hour Freshness.

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