Our Corporate Social Responsibility group at work felt that this would be a good event to support, given that the Philippines is an archipelago with more than 36,000 kilometers of coastline. So we organized a trip to Balai Anilao in Batangas and got about 50 volunteers from work to help in the cleanup efforts. If budget wasn't a constraint, we would have had a lot more participants actually - we sent out a call for volunteers at 2:45pm on a Friday afternoon and within 20 minutes, more than 80 people signed up.
On cleanup day, we arrived at 9am after a 135-km drive from Manila to Anilao that felt even longer due to the traffic. We were then split in two groups - the shoreline cleanup team (most of us were in this group) and the dive cleanup team. After the briefing, everyone went to work. Garbage bags were distributed and people started picking up as much trash as they could.
It was really interesting to see what kind of items were collected. Apart from the expected plastic bags, food wrappers, and drink bottles, we picked up an old knapsack, a syringe (God knows what that was used for...), a toothbrush, and a Magic touch liquid eraser. We also saw a whole lot of "pair-less" footwear. I don't know if it's because people lost one and tossed the other on the beach or if people got drunk and unintentionally while on the beach and lost half their footwear in the process.
The coast fronting Balai Anilao isn't very long but with a team of about 40 people sweeping through the shore, we filled seven large garbage bags in less than an hour. I didn't even realize there was that much clutter on the beach! Then came the garbage analysis - we went through the trash collected to count the different items we had. The information gathered would then be submitted to Ocean Conservancy for processing.
Once we were done, it was time to relax and enjoy the resort. The buffet lunch was really good - I had two massive servings LOL.
To officially close the event, we distributed certificates of participation and volunteer shirts to everyone there. We were lucky that we didn't get rained out considering that it had been raining a lot recently, at least in Manila. It was a successful event that the participants truly enjoyed - even if it meant getting dirty. The Philippines apparently has been the second biggest participant (next to the US) in this event every year since it first joined so it's nice to know that we were involved this year. It's definitely something to look forward to in 2011.
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