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Published on December 19 2015

Watertrek joining the Cambodia Kids Care Center for a plastic pollution operation

Christmas 2015: Watertrek is heading to the The Cambodia Kids Care Center, a children's shelter hosting Cambodian, Malay and Vietnamese kids located on the island of Koh Chang to develop an environmental education program with them. Forty children from 4 to 13 years are being taken care of by Uan. The children live frugally, they always have something to eat as many tourists come to support them in this period. The situation is a little different during the monsoons…The aim is to first teach them some English so we can actually exchange a bit. We set us a list of everything found in the water: bottles, cans, cigarette butts, cotton swabs, bags etc ... Good, not good? dangerous for fish or delicious to eat? children understand everything quickly, the answers are obvious for them.

Second step: let's go collect, count and sort waste on the public beach of Klong Prao. Hardly are the bags out that they come back full of trash. Smiles are big and joy is real. The location is true paradise, with wooden huts, fine sand, turquoise blue water…it is so gorgeous any waste becomes intolerable. The complexity of the subject will reveal itself: lack of management in garbage collection, lack of communal cohesion, inexperience of some local structures. Substantive work needs to be undertaken. The most shocking are those mountains of small plastic bottles that you can see at the entrance of most supermarkets, a disaster waiting to happen, a truly irresponsible behaviour from western industries who are not accountable with recycling in those areas.

Last step: children are offered SUP test sessions, and it is a total success: girls on one side & boys on the other, this joyous world bullheads for hours. The smiles & the laughter say it all.

 

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