How did “The Trash Traveler” start?
I came to Portugal to start working as a biologist in a laboratory. It’s a very nice country! Every free minute I went out with my surfboard and enjoyed the amazing sea. But I surf for a while and I see a lot of plastic pieces floating around me! I couldn’t be just looking anymore and I didn’t have fulfillment for that job. I wanted to do something against the plastic pollution issue, because if we destroy our planet like how humans are doing it, somehow with so much plastic in the oceans will not be healthy, and we need to protect what is our biggest and most important ecosystem.
What is your assessment on the impact of your actions?
For half a year I was cleaning the beaches and producing a video with an ukulele song for social media. It was fun, but, in the end, it wasn’t so good, because only those people on social media who are aware of the issue could find each other. I wanted to do something different, with more crazy awareness actions, which were totally different, to open the eyes of other people. I wanted to reach as many people as possible to think about the issue. Now, after 2 years, I would say: “I’m very happy with the impact and how I can measure it”. A lot of people come to me with positive messages, and thanking me for bringing them onto it.
Photo courtesy of Andreas Noe
What was the episode that marked you most throughout these adventures?
The episode that marked me the most and motivated me in my mission was a day after a storm. I was at the beach and the river was bringing all the trash into the ocean. But everything landed on the sand. I think this was the main storm that I was a few centimeters away from. There was more plastic than I could carry! It was so shocking, but so important!
What was the weirdest thing you’ve ever caught when cleaning?
On the beach, there’s everything! The most weird thing was a doll, with a very scary face, which I picked up, and I was a little confused about why I was picking that and how that little object is coming to the beach and, maybe, this doll was like a cute doll, but it went to the ocean, and came back to us saying: “Arg! What am I doing in the ocean!?”
What is most important when cleaning?
In two months I collected 1.6 tons of plastic. This quantity is just a very tiny drop from 8 million tons that enter the ocean every year. I understood very quickly that it’s not about cleaning. It’s just impossible to clean everything! It’s more important to raise awareness. I always call people to come to the beach, cleaning, but in the end, I tell them “It’s not about cleaning”, and they ask: “Why!?”. “We’re only here because we want to show we want to clean, but if we come back tomorrow, the ocean brings back too much plastic, and cleaning is for nothing.” So, other solutions are needed, like: “How to change this system, where 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean per year?”
Is there any message you’d like to leave to our society?
We are on the right path! We don’t need to do everything perfectly and get rid of all the plastic we have, because it’s very difficult to do that in our society. But if we try, it makes our planet and future much better!
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