Ramon Magsaysay awardee can’t just let rivers die

MANILA, Philippines — From a distance, Gary Bencheghib seemed like any other 20-something paddling away in a kayak, as one might in tropical Bali, Indonesia. Right behind, his younger brother Sam joined him in navigating the meandering river.

Except that the brothers weren’t exactly kayaking — their paddles were slicing through the dark sludge that used to be clear waters. Using a kayak made entirely of discarded plastic bottles, the siblings wove through thick masses of garbage and dead animals in an Odyssean expedition on the Citarum River that they filmed in 2017.

While millions of Indonesians still depend on this longest river in West Java for fish and water supply, it has now become the world’s most polluted waterway as monsoon storms and nearby households and factories dump tons of garbage in it.

Bencheghib, a filmmaker and longtime crusader for marine protection had hoped to create “shocking visuals” to challenge the perception of Bali as being a perfect paradise. The stirring documentary on the state of Citarum River amassed millions of views on Facebook and YouTube, and spurred Indonesian President Joko Widodo to rehabilitate the river.

“It changed my life forever,” Bencheghib said of the dismal state of the river. “When you’ve gone to see the worst places in the world, it’s impossible to look away.” Feeling he needed to be more active on the ground, he shifted gears from being an activist filmmaker to being a grassroots worker raising awareness in communities and developing simple technologies that would rid rivers of garbage.

His relentless campaign against plastic pollution in his adopted country earned Bencheghib recognition from the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation this year as its Awardee for Emergent Leadership. At 28, he is one of the youngest to receive the award, which is considered Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But while age is “oftentimes seen as a boundary, [we’re] here looking for solutions,” he said of the generation of youth activists calling for urgent action on climate change. “And when people see true impact, they can’t ignore it,” he added.

Early start

Bencheghib’s activism started when he was 14, when he and his siblings and friends would organize weekly coastal cleanups across Bali. He was 9 when the family moved from France to Indonesia, drawn by Bali’s promise of an exotic paradise.

But while the island looks immaculate in photos, he saw how it “very quickly [changed] with overconsumption and plastic production.” The “degradation [worsened] year by year with plastic [wastes] on our shorelines,” he said. Along with his brother Sam and sister Kelsey, Bencheghib would clean up the beaches every week and soon attracted friends and other volunteers.

The Bencheghib siblings later formed Make a Change World which produced films and documentaries on plastic pollution and urged environmental protection. Many of the videos were “crazy,” he said, like one that documented his friend and fellow activist Rob Greenfield as he wore every piece of trash he had ever consumed. By the end of the month, Greenfield was basically a monster with 135 pounds of trash on him—walking evidence that the average American creates 4.5 pounds of trash a day.

That same year, the Citarum River video was shot, bringing international attention to Make A Change World. Later, Bencheghib, then just 23, had a key role advising the Indonesian army on how to go about the cleanup of the river. This documentary filmmaking graduate of New York Film Academy believes in the power of filmmaking to inspire action. “Visuals can be so memorable because [they’re] so in your face,” he said. “It’s all about the visuals that would stick in the minds of politicians to empower change, [and of] companies to move away from single-use plastic…”

For real impact

But even as the videos racked millions of views, “it felt like we weren’t making any impact on the ground,” Bencheghib lamented. “We realized that we needed [to get] our hands on the action: actually be in rivers and develop simple technologies to stop plastic pollution.”

In 2020, the Bencheghibs established Sungai Watch, an organization with the ambitious mission to place trash barriers in every river in Indonesia, and later, in the world. Rivers are, after all, the bloodstream of Bali: more than 90 percent of its residents live within one kilometer of its 372 rivers.

“Rivers are the perfect connection point between our life on land and the ocean,” Bencheghib explained. “They are the best reflections of our actions on land.”

Because more than 80 percent of plastic wastes in the ocean come from rivers, the siblings believed that the best solution was to stop the plastic pollution directly at the source: upstream in the rivers. That meant developing trash barriers from recycled materials like PVC pipes, discarded bamboo and recycled tires to catch the trash, which they then process and sort for possible upcycling.

Brand audit

Within 14 months, Sungai’s team of 55 had successfully installed 105 barriers around Bali, which diverted a total of 333,000 kilograms of trash away from its rivers. They also work with several villages where they had installed trash barriers, educating them on proper waste management and instilling in them a sense of responsibility to keep the barriers clean.

Sungai Watch does a brand audit on the trash collected to identify the biggest plastic culprits. Its 2021 impact report listed Indonesian companies Danone Aqua, Wings Surya, Orang Tua, Santos Jaya Abadi and global conglomerate Unilever.

Bencheghib said they are in touch with the top plastic polluters in the hope of getting them to make radical shifts in their business. The idea sounds “radical, since they’re the enemies. But if we want to move as a society we need to have an open conversation,” he added.

Already there are glimmers of hope. In some pockets of the rivers where they had placed barriers, fish have returned and the waters are starting to clear. Some villages like Legian had been so eager to see results from the barriers that they now fine those caught throwing wastes in the river. Some have opted for social punishment by posting photos of offenders in the village.

Bencheghib hopes to scale up their trash barrier idea across Indonesia and eventually in Asia. He has expressed particular interest in the Philippines, whose population density and vulnerability to climate change is similar to that of Indonesia. He is aware though that his work has barely begun, with more plastic being produced unless governments and companies get their act together.

But for now, he’d continue wading knee-deep in Bali’s rivers hoping to unearth their former glory. “I definitely do see a world without plastics, otherwise I won’t be doing what I’m doing,” he said.

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