5 MIN READ
06-05-2025
“The River Is Ours”: A Community Rises for World Environment Day
Ahmad Fasta, 4ocean Jembrana Content Correspondent
This World Environment Day, the morning didn’t begin with speeches—it began with movement.
By 7:00 a.m., the banks of a local river were already buzzing with activity. The 4ocean crew—Irkam, Yusuf, Ali Wafa, Ainun Najib, Imam Busairi, and Jose Liu—joined hands with residents of a nearby village to take back their river from the weight of plastic waste. There were no big banners, no media coverage—just a shared understanding that something had to be done.
From the first hour, the energy was electric. Housewives scanned the grass for hidden wrappers. Men carried heavy sacks and trimmed back overgrowth using tools they’d brought from home. Even the village head and neighborhood leader picked up rakes and got to work. No one was there to pose. Everyone was there to clean.
“We want this to happen every month,” one man said during a quick water break, smiling as he wiped sweat from his brow. “This river belongs to all of us.”
And that feeling carried through the morning. The cleanup wasn’t about orders or rewards—it was about fixing something that had gone ignored for too long. The river, once treated like a dumping ground, had suffered from years of neglect. Plastics clung to tree roots. Food wrappers were buried in mud. Floods had wedged debris high into the shrubs. The water still flowed—but choked, sluggish, tired.
By midday, the crew had pulled over 1,250 pounds of waste from the site. Tangled plastic was peeled off tree trunks. The banks, once hidden under trash and grass, were finally visible again. Even under the hot sun, no one left early. The sight of a cleaner river made it worth staying.
Why This Matters
This wasn’t just a cleanup. It became a conversation.
Neighbors sat with the 4ocean crew and shared their thoughts—about what pollution had taken from them, and what they wanted to rebuild. They spoke of community-led programs, of youth education, of moving from one river to the next until the problem was no longer normal.
That spirit—shared effort, shared ownership—is what makes this work more than just trash collection. It becomes something deeper. A quiet refusal to accept things as they are. A belief that healing starts not with policy, but with presence.
Change doesn’t have to be grand. Sometimes it starts with a single wrapper, pulled from the dirt and dropped into a sack. Sometimes it starts with showing up—broom in hand, hope intact, and a neighbor beside you.
