Hundreds of people gather on the beach at Bali, New Taipei City, at four o’clock in the afternoon on a scorchingly hot late-July day. Dressed in long-sleeved shirts and sun hats, and armed with tongs and garbage bags, these seemingly heat-proof “warriors” listen attentively to their two young commanders as they prepare to storm the beach.
This beach cleaning troupe of more than 600 will spend the entire afternoon annihilating their enemy: the thousands of pieces of trash littering the beach. By the time their mission is complete, they will have removed more than two tons of plastic bottles and bags, cigarette butts, broken glass, take-out boxes and other debris. This action, just one in an ongoing beach cleaning campaign, will end when two New Taipei City Government garbage trucks carry the victors’ “trophies” away for proper disposal.
The two young commanders with the never-surrender attitude are American Daniel Gruber and Taiwan’s own Jason Huang, the founders of RE-THINK, a group that has been waging war on trash for the last three years.
Igniting the fires
Gruber arrived in Taiwan from Shanghai three years ago intending to pursue graduate studies at Kaohsiung’s National Sun Yat-sen University. A lover of water sports, Gruber traveled to Little Liuqiu with Huang soon after his arrival, planning to enjoy some time at the beach. But when they went into the water, their hands and feet got entangled with plastic bags. Rather than leave, they began cleaning up the trash around them, and soon filled a trash bag with so much garbage that they had trouble lifting it. When friends posted pictures of the men’s efforts on Facebook, their activities began to create a stir. News of the foreign man helping clean up Taiwan’s trash went viral, providing Taiwanese with food for thought.
Many online commenters found the situation embarrassing, wondering why it was that a foreign man was cleaning up the mess on our beaches. But Gruber laughs: “I just didn’t want any trash getting on me while I was having fun at the beach.” Even so, Gruber doesn’t have a problem with that embarrassment encouraging people to clean up Taiwan’s beaches and reduce their trash output.
Making things possible
Gruber says that Taiwan’s people are entirely responsible for turning his unplanned beach cleanup into a 50,000-member island-wide campaign.
“I feel like I’ve become a movie superhero, but my name is Garbage Man!” Gruber laughs and says that he likes the name in spite of how awful it sounds. He adds that superheroes exist because their societies need them, explaining: “Garbage Man exists because Taiwan needs me to exist.”
Gruber says that there’s really nothing special about him—he just happened to be the person willing to lead the charge on this issue—and he’s received unbelievable support from the Taiwanese public.
“I planned an event in Taichung two years ago that happened to coincide with a big storm. I thought, well, if the rain pours down and no one comes, I’ll get a day off, which will be nice.” Much to his surprise, everyone who had signed up actually came. They put on raincoats and bamboo hats and cleaned up the beach in the rain, holding umbrellas for one another and giving each other encouragement. Gruber says that seeing them in action moved him to tears.
“I sometimes get so worn out that I feel like I’m going to just die on the beach. If it weren’t for these people, there’s no way I would have stuck at this for so long.” Gruber says that there are times when you’re cleaning up a beach in the searing sun and gusting wind, having walked up and down it for so long that you can’t take another step, that the only thing that keeps you going is your faith.
Harder than it looks
As the organizers of these events, Gruber and Huang must deal with issues beyond just the physical aspects of beach cleaning.
They find managing their cleanup groups the most challenging. Some participants forget to sort the trash they collect. Others don’t want to leave once the event is over. “Picking trash up from beaches isn’t a game. It’s dirty and it’s exhausting. Why would you want to stick around once you’re done?” wonders Huang.
When setting up an event, Gruber and Huang first meet with government officials and sanitation crews to borrow the equipment their group will need and to arrange for the disposal of the waste they collect. When they organized an event at Keelung’s Waimushan Beach last year, the local sanitation team made a point of providing RE-THINK with sieves. “We were baffled until we got on site.” Gruber explains that the garbage at Waimushan is in such little bits and pieces that you can’t pick it up with tongs; you have to sift it out.
In one instance, Huang discovered that a beach cleanup participant had bought tongs, plastic bags and other gear just for the event and then threw it all out the moment the event was over. “Creating new trash to clean up old trash is just backwards.” To avoid making more waste, Huang urges people to use the tools they already have. If they don’t have anything appropriate, he encourages them to borrow anything necessary from RE-THINK.
As the numbers of participants in events have increased, Gruber and Huang have begun giving serious thought to the sustainability of their campaign, and have even considered turning it into a social enterprise. But their first priority is systematizing their organization.
“For all that we love Nature and the ocean, we can’t guarantee that we’ll continue doing this forever.” Huang says their goal is to restructure RE-THINK so that it can keep going without them. With that in mind, Gruber and Huang turned over the organization of a few events to students at the National Defense Medical Center with whom they had been working. For those events, Gruber and Huang simply assisted with communications and recruiting. “Ideally, we’d like to see a RE-THINK branch in every part of Taiwan, which would enable more frequent cleanups at more locations,” says Huang.
Rethinking life
Gruber grew up in Hawaii and has a great love and concern for the ocean. When discussing the problem of ocean trash, he notes that it isn’t a Taiwanese problem, but a global one. “This isn’t an issue of environmental conservation. It’s one of survival.”
Doing these cleanups, Gruber has learned that while some trash is likely just litter dropped by visitors, other garbage has been deliberately dumped. “I once found dozens of bags crammed full of trash stuffed into some shrubs on Hualien’s Qixingtan Beach.” He says he also found a large number of tires, none of which could have been “accidentally” dropped by visitors.
This suggests that the trash problem is not one of individual behavior, that it instead requires a change to the whole social environment.
“We chose to call it ‘RE-THINK’ in hope that people would rethink their relationship to ‘things’ and the environment.” Huang says that our love of convenience causes us to use large numbers of plastic bags and large amounts of plasticware every day. And since we don’t see where all of this waste ends up, we just keep creating it without a second thought.
People often remark to Gruber that in spite of all the trash he has collected, there’s a new pile of it every time you go back. They ask, “Is there any point?”
He responds, “Honestly, there’s no way that the beach cleanups can get everything. But I have to do it anyway.” He explains that it’s like cleaning your home. The fact that it will become dirty again doesn’t stop us from cleaning it. He argues that we should have the same attitude towards the environment at large.
“The important thing is that we educate the next generation.” With that in mind, Huang and Gruber have made promoting environmental education RE-THINK’s core objective. They also believe that practicing what you preach is the best way to educate. Let people see the trash for themselves, and it will influence how they live their lives.
“Trash and pollution aren’t simply a consequence of an individual’s carelessness. They are humanity’s collective mistake. Blaming this person or that doesn’t help. You have to take action to fix the problem,” says Gruber.
Daniel Gruber (left), an American, and Jason Huang (right), from Taiwan, have used their love of the environment to get tens of thousands of people involved in beach cleanups and to change Taiwanese lifestyles. (courtesy of RE-THINK)
It takes real commitment to put up with searing sun, buffeting wind, and the general exhaustion that is part and parcel of picking up and toting trash up and down a beach.
Gruber’s efforts have touched many Taiwanese. More than 600 people turned out for a recent cleanup of the beach at Bali, New Taipei City. (courtesy of RE-THINK)
Beach-cleaning basics include sun blockers, tongs, and a garbage bag. The events are carried out in coordination with local sanitation crews, who lend participants the tools they need.
Jason Huang says, “RE-THINK isn’t just about tidying up beaches. It has greater significance as an educational endeavor, a means for enabling people to practice what they preach, for bringing young people face to face with environmental problems, and for creating the possibility of a better tomorrow.” (courtesy of RE-THINK)