Bali students take on ‘plastic predicament’ in climate change play

Reported by Bethany Ao, GSS correspondent

Visualize Bali, and chances are you think of a serene, pristine environmental paradise.

But students at Green School in Bali, Indonesia, came to the Conference of Youth today in Paris determined to tell a different story.

Students performed skits, showed videos and photos, and shared drinking straws, the most common piece of trash on the Pacific island that is a mecca for millions of tourists each year.

They also spoke about the one material that poses a “predicament” to their island’s beauty and way of life: Plastic.

Carbon emissions, conflict oil plantations and peatland fires are among the many environmental issues raised by students who gave a performance at COY today in Paris.

Plastic is a special focus.

In October 2013, two Green School students — sisters Melati and Isabel Wijsen, then in grades 6 and 7 — created a campaign called “Bye Bye Plastic Bags” aimed at banning the use, sale and production of plastic bags in Bali by January 2015.

Their efforts prompted teachers and students to write and produce “Noble Material,” a musical “about the plight of plastic (in Bali),” said student Maya Hurd-Lucker.

Earlier this year Bali’s governor agreed to ban plastic bags by 2018 and to require retailers to charge a fee for them beginning next year.

Plastic bags, along with bottles and other items, are part of what’s known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (see photo above), a massive floating pile of trash that endangers not only the environment and marine life but regional shipping and the area’s economy.

For students, plastic has also become a life lesson in how to create social change.

“Our mission is to contribute to positive change about the issues we are facing at home, make awareness about that global,” said student Elle O’Brien, 17. “Sharing the information about plastic, and palm oil and fires… (the play) was a good chance to do that.”

Green School students have been invited to perform “Noble Material” at the upcoming Sustainable Innovations forum during the COP21 climate change conference, scheduled to begin next Monday in Paris.

Rehearsing the play has meant a deep dive into the science of climate change and global warming.

“We have prepared by researching all the topics presented at the COP, their urgency and the action that needs to take place, as well as connecting with other forward-thinking youth groups,” said Hurd-Lucker.

“We are also raising awareness on many of the mega carbon emissions in Indonesia that are not receiving international attention,” she added, including peatland fires that “are choking Borneo and Sumatra.

“Burning plastic bags can cause emissions (and) climate change,” said Isabel Wijsen, now 13. “Here in Paris, we see a huge difference between how trash is dealt with here and where we come from in Bali. There is no trash on the sides of the roads. There must be a good trash pickup system here. That’s the problem for us in Bali.”

Melati Wijsen, now 14, agreed.

“One of our suggested solutions is to charge for every plastic bag that is handed out,” she said. “We see it working all around the world, even here in Europe, so why wouldn’t it work on our island?”

“We are the problem, but we are also the solution,” she added. “It has to do with our mindset. Plastic bags are being handed out and we are the ones accepting them. We, the consumer, must change.

“Change has become so needed in so many different ways,” Melati said. “This climate conference is all about it.”

—Bethany Ao is GSS News Editor for Europe and a junior at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. See more of her on-the-ground reports from COY11 on Twitter @GSSVoices, #GSS_COY11 and on Facebook. Follow Ao @BethanyAo and email her atbethanyao2017@u.northwestern.edu.