Melati and Isabel Wijsen BYE BYE PLASTIC BAGS in Bali

The two sisters were inspired by a school lesson about people who changed the world- Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.

They had already experienced swimming in a bay in Bali and seeing plastic bottles, bags and bits of plastic floating on the water.

They went home and did some research. Their research revealed that many countries had banned plastic bags.

Why not Bali? They would try to solve the plastic pollution problem on the island by persuading people to stop littering… With 6 friends they started a campaign to ban paper bags… They named it** Bye Bye Plastic Bags**

The first thing they did was to set up an online petition asking the governor of the island to support the ban.
On day one they had 6, 000 signatures. Over the next few months this rose to 77,000. They asked the airport manager to help and they gained another 10,000.
By this time their village of Deso Perenon had reduced plastic bag usage by 60%.

The governor had still not responded. They learned, after a visit to the National Gandhi Museum, he had called a strike to force change. They also decided to so something similar-publicly fast from sunrise to sunset - he finally responded.
After meeting them he signed an agreement to work towards a plastic-bag free Bali.

They now involved businesses -shops, hotels and restaurants.

In June 2015 the government announced that by 2018 plastic bags would be band…
In 2015 the sisters w ere invited yo give a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talk in London.

By January 2018 Bali failed to reach target so the government declared a Garbage Emergency -officials 700 cleaners, with 35 trucks, to clear 100 tonnes of debris each day. In December the government announced single-use plastics would be banned from the island from July 2019.

The sisters won many awards. Today Bye Bye Plastic Bags is a global youth movement in 45 countries.

Sources
Wikipedia
Earth Heroes by Lily Dyu and Amy Blackwell