KUCHING, May 9 — For most people, a Saturday morning at Kuching Waterfront means a leisurely stroll, coffee with friends or a quick jog overlooking the Sarawak River.
However, for a growing group of volunteers armed with gloves, litter pickers and rubbish bags, it has become a weekly mission to keep the city clean, one piece of trash at a time.
In less than an hour during a recent clean-up at the Old Court House near the waterfront, volunteers from Trash Hero Kuching collected 19 kg of rubbish, including cigarette butts, plastic cups, food wrappers, bottles and other single-use waste.
Trash Hero Kuching leader Shahrul Izhar said the movement was born from a simple frustration shared by a few friends who frequently encountered rubbish while exercising around the city.
“You want to enjoy the environment, but everywhere you look, there is trash. It hurts the beauty of the place and stray cats and dogs end up eating from the rubbish,” he told Bernama recently.
The rubbish bags lined up along the waterfront serve as a stark reminder that litter remains a persistent issue despite Kuching being recognised as the world’s 11th cleanest city in 2024 by Swiss air quality technology company IQAir.
Shahrul, a civil servant, said the group first started in June 2023 with only three people cleaning up around the Kuching Civic Centre area, without any major plans or expectations at the time.
“Every Saturday, just two friends and I spend only an hour cleaning up, yet the amount of rubbish we collect never fails to shock us. We once collected up to 100kg of rubbish within an hour at Pasir Panjang Beach in Santubong,” he said.
Co-leader Dr Brian Sim Mong Huat, 33, said people are often oblivious to how much waste there is in public spaces until they participate in a clean-up themselves.
For Brian, the activity has become more than just volunteer work, describing the weekly clean-ups as therapeutic and rewarding, especially when seeing immediate results from clearing heavily littered areas.
“People may think a place looks clean, but once you start paying attention, you realise there is rubbish everywhere,” said the doctor at Sarawak General Hospital.
He said the most commonly collected items are cigarette butts, plastic cups, takeaway containers and food packaging, reflecting the growing problem of single-use waste in public spaces.
What began as a small initiative among friends has since grown into one of Kuching’s most active environmental volunteer movements, attracting students, government agencies, villages and private companies.
For first-time volunteer and Universiti Malaya chemistry student Khairunnisa Syuhada Mohamad Ossen, 20, joining the programme initially began as part of an assignment, but the experience quickly changed her perspective on environmental responsibility.
“After seeing how much rubbish we collected in less than an hour, I realised the problem is much bigger than I expected,” she said.
Shahrul shared that some clean-up programmes now draw as many as 100 volunteers through collaborations with Dewan Bandaraya Kuching Utara and other institutions such as universities.
Beyond just picking up rubbish, the Kuching native said the group hopes to educate the public on the importance of waste reduction and avoiding single-use plastics.
“We clean, we educate and we change. Through social media and our activities, we want people to realise that everyone has a role in protecting the environment,” he said.
Despite the growing support, Shahrul hopes more people, especially youths, will continue stepping forward to volunteer, even if only for an hour every weekend. — Bernama
