Plastic Upcycling Program | Bali Villages

Natasha Wanderly is organizing this fundraiser.

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Greetings beloved! A huge thank you for being here :)

Ecstatic Ocean Initiative saves oceans from plastic pollution and supports rural communities and artists globally by transforming plastic into art that inspires an ocean of ecstasy.

The video below speaks loudly about the devastating issue we are currently addressing:

This video is no joke. We see this everyday — yes, even children playing in plumes of plastic smoke.

When beginning such a challenge as to save our communities, environment, and world from the devastating effects of plastic pollution, we could only ask ourselves,

"Where do we start?"

Well, imagine this —

You’ve been away on vacation. Happy to be home, you walk in your front door to see your kitchen flooding; it is being absolutely destroyed.

Someone left the sink running. Everything is falling off the counters, the floor is soaking with water, and the horrendous smell of rapidly growing mold burns your nose.

You begin to panic. What do you do? How long has it been flooding? How much damage has been done? Where's the mop?

What you need to do, very first, is turn off the tap.

It’s the very source of the problem.

90% of the plastic that ends up in oceans comes from rivers. So, just like with our current crisis of plastic flooding into and polluting our oceans, going to the source of the problem is the first place we need to begin.

First things first, we turn off the tap. Then, we clean up the rest.

The grand plan for our organization follows these three steps:

Step 1: “Turn Off The Tap”
Step 2: “Mop Up The Mess”
Step 3: “Shine The Floor”

But we are here, today, creating a Go Fund Me page, to help us begin with Step 1.

To dive deeper into our overall plan, mission, vision, plastic health effects, and our story, you can read our more thorough document here .

Turning Off The Tap

Indonesia suffers from plastic pollution worse than almost any area in the world, and 90-95% of that plastic that ends up in the ocean flows down from these rural villages by river.

Due to a lack of organization and funding, their plastic waste is either thrown into rivers, or burned. As you saw, neither are great options, and burning plastic poses many serious health concerns, such as cancer, heart disease, infertility, and much more.

Our mission is to get to the plastic before it becomes pollution — to turn off the tap of these infamous "plastic rivers."

Today, we have begun setting up plastic "upcycling" programs with local village leaders. This problem doesn't exist because the local villages don't care, they really do. And they are ready to work with us to do something about it.

Most importantly, we have a plan. The image above is from our first meeting the village leaders to create this powerful plan.

Once or twice a month, we go throughout these villages and collect their plastic waste in exchange for something valuable to them — money (7K IDR per kilo: 4K goes directly to the family, 2K goes to community organizers). This gives local communities enough incentive to collect plastic from their waste bin, surrounding land, and rivers.

This plastic upcycling program has so far proven to: clean the environment of plastic pollution, provide extra income to families, and help educate communities about the pervading issue.

Most importantly, the community is very ecstatic about this program!

This "turns off the tap."

We will then transform the plastic collected into something valuable, that won't be thrown away: art that inspires an "ocean of ecstasy." Art that creates a vision of how the world can be when we all work together to make it an amazing place.

We have already begun to accept art submissions from passionate artists, their "ecstatic ocean" designs will be displayed on our products (such as on the front of reusable tote bags). We will also support the craftsmanship of local Balinese sculptors and artisans. These artists will gain worldly recognition alongside a share of our profits.

It’s a win-win-win. We love win-win-wins.

Here's where your generosity can spark the movement.

In Bali, alone, there are hundreds of villages with thousands of families all needing this program. So, the quicker we can scale up, the more of this precious environment and the health of humanity we can save.

We are beginning small, but the demand is huge.

To make this happen, your generous and world-saving donations will go toward the following:

— Providing durable bags for each household to collect plastic in
— Funding to purchase plastic directly from families
— Purchasing the machinery we need to process plastic in an environmentally friendly way
— A working space for processing and storage
— Transportation needs to move plastic to our processing site
— Housing benefits for volunteers/reimbursement
— Product development to expand the possibilities of what we can create with plastic
— Scaling up our ability to provide this service to more and more households

CURRENT UPDATE:

Our first month's plastic recycling pick up was a HUGE success!

In the past few months, we have collected over 8 TONS (8,000 kilos) of plastic.

This grand amount of plastic would have otherwise been burned (which is extremely toxic and environmentally damaging) or ended up in a river to be dumped in the ocean.

How was this so successful?

The action taken by this community has been AMAZING! With leaders working to help us organize everything (huge shout outs to Dewa, Wayan, Kamang and Kadek!) and a community excited about collecting their plastic waste and, most wonderfully...

✨CLEANING UP THE RIVERS AND LAND! ✨

It has been outstanding to see just how pristine these villages are already looking.

Most notably, we couldn't have done it without the love, donations, and support from YOU: Amazing ECSTATIC OCEAN INITIATORS!

We will continue expanding our recycling program to many other villages (who are already eager to hop on board), and will soon begin turning this "pollution" into art that inspires an ocean of ECSTASY!

There is so much greatness to come.

The sooner we are able to act and scale this program (to Indonesia and beyond), the sooner we can make this planet, and all the beings who share it, a cleaner, healthier, and more ecstatic place.

Our ultimate vision to ignite humanity’s faith that, as a global tribe, we can paint a bright, new picture of the future -- Of a world where not only the ocean’s are ecstatic, but creativity is celebrated, people and wildlife are thriving, and the Planet looking up with gratitude, smiling at all that we have achieved by working together.

Your donations literally mean the world to us. We, and everyone who will benefit from it, are forever grateful.