Words: David Brearley
Cambodia is a beautiful country, but has a side that I have attempted to shed some light on. Not because I necessarily wanted to, but felt I had to. From Laos, I decided to paddle to Vietnam and document the plastic tide down the Mekong.
One kayaker and 500km of Cambodian plastic waste
Since the initial impressions piece I wrote in January, I took a break from kayaking and visited my mate’s zipline course (Tad Fan and Tree Top Explorer, Green Discovery) while I was planning my trip across Cambodia. Little did I know that my preparation would be fairly futile and my first solo kayaking expedition would be a massive learning curve, in a new country that speaks little to no English! I was told I would have to camp for a couple of nights at the beginning and from there would be able to stay in hostels.
When I arrived back in Don Det, I experimented with different camping variations using what kit I already had. The owner of the hostel was doubtful that my homemade hammock would work and so gave me one of his old and slightly broken ones. This began a trend; I was given gifts of food and little bits and pieces that I could not find in the Loatian markets from many generous people. This was a great confidence booster and I will always be grateful for the parting gifts and support from the backpackers just before I left.
plastic footprint
In hindsight, there are several things I would have done and bought before the trip that would have seriously cut down on my plastic footprint. Turns out six days with very poor internet isn’t really enough time to plan for an 11-day expedition. I concentrated more on the logistics and how to tackle the problems I might encounter and less on planning the documentation of the plastic problem and how I could reduce my own impact on it. I realized along the way I shouldn’t beat myself up about this as the preparation I did saved me a fair few times. One preparation that I did not take, and potentially couldn’t have, was cutting down on how much stuff I brought with me.
The Watershed Futa Stowfloat I was using contained my thin down jacket, a jumper, a t-shirt, a pair of underwear, trousers, socks, food and my computer case, which contained a heap of other important things. These things were crucial to keep dry as I needed a fresh set of clothes for when I got off the water and it was a good bag to take from the river to wherever I was staying for the night as it contained all my valuables. Everything else I had for the four months in SE Asia and New Zealand was tucked away in the back of my boat or strapped to the top. Both these places would inevitably end up getting drenched but this did not matter.
What I should have taken to cut down on my waste above all things was a reusable tupperware box. I tried to cut down on the packaging for my food as much as possible but without the means to cook/store food efficiently, there was no point in buying lots of food before the trip. A jetboil would have been a good investment as coffee would have been greatly appreciated. However again, I didn’t want to add weight to my already heavy load and good luck trying to find any of these items between Pakse and Phnom Penh. Instead I had to buy my food almost daily, with the exception of when I knew I wouldn’t encounter anywhere for the day after. This included rice in a polystyrene box and food in little plastic bags. I know, terrible! But I reused a couple of the clean ones which was almost as good as having a tupperware and said no to anything unnecessary that didn’t increase the structural integrity of my food, or keep it dry.
As good as it would have been for cutting down on waste, having a tupperware box would be another bulky thing I would have had to carry and wash. Spending around 12 hours on the water, and not having any daylight or tap water on land, created more hassle than I could afford if I wanted to have enough sleep for the next day. You are recommended to drink a couple of litres of water over a period of 12 hours wherever you are, but when there’s no shade in 35 degree heat, you need to double that. Although I had my one-litre Degbit bottle, I also needed a couple of two-litre plastic bottles that I reused. These got slowly destroyed when empty and so I had to replace one. Maybe I should have had lifestraw, but as I mentioned in my previous article, you can’t rely on these.
These sound like excuses but really I just found it hard in general to think about my plastic footprint, as well as all the other challenges that come with a self-supported expedition and the documentation I was trying to achieve. That being said, I kept every bit of rubbish I made until the middle of the trip where I found a recycling point at Hanchey Bamboo Resort. The rest of the expedition’s rubbish was recycled in Phnom Penh.
Again, more weight. I can understand why around the mooring sites in a town, there was so much rubbish generated by the river people. With no easy alternatives and lack of knowledge on plastic leakage, etc, the fishermen will discard all their rubbish on the bank. Any extra weight that they and their family generate slows their boat down and costs them more in fuel. There are a couple of places that they can deposit their rubbish, but these are pretty far from the river and when you are only ever on land to sell your catch for the day and pick up a couple of supplies before you return to your bed on the boat, finding a bin is your last priority. I can relate to this (apart from sleeping on the boat) but I did it because I had the knowledge of what plastic pollution in and next to the rivers leads to on a local and global scale.
Although there was a lot of rubbish on the sides of the river, I found very little floating in the river. There were several occasions that I found it in mangroves, essentially acting as natural filters for the rivers, and again in fishing traps, where the only thing the fishermen caught was plastic. Hopefully this means that most of the rubbish that the fishermen make is deposited on land, but I doubt this. Regardless, I predict that come the monsoon season, it all gets washed down to the sea anyway.
human impact
Research is lacking in how the plastic is affecting the local fish stock and environment, but some local facilities and universities are conducting studies to see what environmental changes are happening due to human impact. I want to come back during the wet season one day, and paddle from the top of Vietnam to the sea, so I can see what is coming down from the Mekong in general. I decided not to do it this trip due to the nature of the Mekong past the border and not knowing which channel of the vast delta would lead to the sea. Maybe a trip, with a sea kayak next time, would be good to explore the whole delta and find possibilities, if there are any, of how to cap the outflow of plastic into the South China Sea.
I mentioned it in a previous article (Initial Impressions of the plastic problem Laos side of the Mekong, https://thepaddlermag.com/initial-impressions-of-the-plastic-problem-lao-side-of-the-mekong/) about how, in Laos, the plastic bottles are getting reused as fishing net markers and I have seen this time and time again in Cambodia. They also use metal spray canisters and utilize both products in different ways. I can’t say for certain, but I predict they use the metal canisters because they are tougher and last longer. I wanted to explain to the fishermen that they lasted longer because they don’t degrade in the sun, unlike plastic.
microplastic
The environment is a perfect condition to make microplastic, which fish and other aquatic species ingest causing harm. The language barrier is so large that I couldn’t even start, but even if I did, I’m not sure if the locals would really care. More research should be done into the local fish stock and if the decline is due to overfishing or pollution. The river people only care about the near future and don’t think far ahead, and it’s not my place to tell them to.
Paddling along I saw a house that had fallen into the ever-changing Mekong. The monsoon season brings power currents that destroy the outer corner bank and deposit silt on the inner, slower side of the river. This movement of the river brings about so many problems for the riverside people. Mid-water villages on stilts become land-based, making it harder for the fishermen to unload and load their produce. Vice versa, houses fall into the river and even if they can remain intact by becoming floating villages, it still means a drastic change for the people living there. Like the fishermen having problems with plastic waste weight, the locals have other matters to worry about from the Mekong than their rubbish that they know little, nor care, about.
plastic landfill landslide
On the second day, I came across Strung Treng, the first notable town and there the plastic problem became worse. For the first time, I saw a plastic landfill landslide. Essentially, the rubbish gets chucked from the roadside and tumbles down the bank to sit there till the rain washes it into the Mekong, or the river rises carrying it away.
I got very bored of taking photos of these and quickly realized that a clean up effort along the bank would be a large challenge due to the volume of plastic and terrain that would have to be traversed. That’s not to say it would be impossible, but it would be far easier to collect the plastic once it gets taken by the river. Part of my expedition was to identify a point where a decent clean up effort would be most effective and locate a spot where the ‘real’ issue started. Although I am not to say that the whole river shouldn’t be cleaned, just starting with an achievable goal.
On day nine, for the first time, I was completely speechless at Ruessej Chrouy, 25km north of the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. There, the beach was around two kilometres long and completely filled with rubbish, with a couple of hundred people milling about their everyday business. With many beautifully decorated fishing boats moored to the bank, it was clear this was a popular site to sell the goods the Mekong provided. Families ate, worked and lived in this rubbish heap, but didn’t seem to mind or didn’t have an alternative. From here, as I paddled down the river, I found myself kayaking through an oil spill that covered my boat, hands and paddle. I’ve never wanted a shower as much as after paddling through that, but I had another five hours of paddling to go. This was a worrying sight to witness before I got to the most populated city in the country.
Phnom Penh
From this point onwards, the villages were bad, towns were worse and Phnom Penh… I’m not even sure where to begin. However, the particularly worrying thing was that there were no buildings on the riverbank but I still couldn’t paddle more than five metres without paddling past a piece of plastic. Ranging from full bin bags to small bottle caps, it was everywhere. All the way down to Vietnam, the problem stayed pretty constant and almost certainly got worse further into the delta, with 30 million Vietnamese living there.
On a beach where a lot of plastic had washed up, I saw a man and his son walking down and collecting the bottle caps (made from a valuable plastic that can be recycled) to sell back to the companies. They also collected aluminium cans and glass bottles that are heavily recycled in Cambodia (or old to another country for recycling) and have been for some time. It was unclear if this was how he made the majority of his money but they were definitely there for profit and not to clean the beaches. This was really encouraging, as it shows there is worth to other people’s rubbish and could be a turning point if everyone was aware of this.
Even so, trying to communicate this would be hard as the locals only see things a day at a time, and if fishing earns them more money and is what they know, they will always choose that. I’m hopeful that if a system was implemented that makes it easy, and once the locals are educated in how the plastic is destroying the local ecosystem, then the plastic tide down the Mekong could be reduced. Plastic Free Cambodia are leading the charge on educating local people and organizations in the importance of living plastic free lives, or at least as close as possible. Look them up to see how you can live a plastic free lifestyle if you are ever in South East Asia.
Acknowledgements
With the conclusion of my expedition and report on the plastic problem out along the Mekong, I need to thank the people and organizations that helped me up to now and continue to do so.
My friends and family that shared my campaign and are responsible for the majority of the publicity throughout these past few months. They messaged throughout my time in Laos and the expedition in Cambodia, spurring me on to the finish line when the going got tough. I took their advice and drastically changed my mindset. Some of the best advice I got was from Mick O’Shea, the first person to fully navigate the Mekong from source to sea (check out his book: ‘In The Naga’s Wake’) and his wife Yuta, who was a great reassurance that if all went to hell, I had someone on this right side of the world that could help me.
The journey would have taken far longer, without the grace and kindness of the locals. From putting me up for the night and feeding me, to directing me down the fastest channels. No transport or hostels were booked in advanced but the Cambodian people came through and saved my ass on several occasions. I would like to thank all of them for making the river my friend and not my nemesis. Big thanks to my drivers that took me to guesthouses, resorts and me and my boat back to Phnom Penh from the Vietnamese border. Equally, Blue Hostel, Phnom Penh, and White Rabbit Siem Reap, were kind enough to store my boat during my trip back to Bangkok.
While in Siem Reap, Sarah Rhodes let me use a spare donated computer and her desk, which allow me to write the majority of this article. Plastic Free Cambodia has been a great resource for ideas on how to approach the problem in Cambodia, so I would like to thank everyone that contributes to such a great organization. I am so proud to be raising money for a program that has such a great leadership and education mission.
Cheers to Alpacr for sharing my posts and gaining better publicity. Their efforts in eco-tourism are great and fresh due to the attitude of its CEO, Dan Swygart and his team. Alpacr landed in Southeast Asia in February 2019 and I hope their users will continue to bring awareness to the plastic problem across the area for years to come, with their social media posts and conduct clean ups to inspire more people to less polluting lifestyles.
I wouldn’t have got anywhere without the VE Aircore Pro Carbon whitewater paddle. With their adjustable length and feather that allowed me to have a great paddle for every occasion. Thank you to Stu Morris for donating these to replace the Aircore Creeker Carbon for Laos that I sent back to the UK before the expedition. Being two-piece, I could easily hide them in my boat overnight, allowing for a better night’s sleep with less to worry about. Stu also linked me to many people in the kayaking industry who, without, I would not have as much publicity, which has helped spread the awareness of the mismanaged plastic waste along the Mekong.
When I started this campaign my parents thought I was a little crazy because I had never shown a passion for helping with environmental problems in such a way before. I always wanted to get into renewable energy and environmentally friendly technologies (my master’s’ thesis was on energy harvesting in rivers) but never focused on a particular field until now. Once they realized my new found enthusiasm was well intended and not an impulsive dream, they fully supported my mission. Without them I wouldn’t have been able to carry on at the beginning when progress was slow and the bumps seemed endless. So cheers, mum and dad.
Finally, everyone who has donated, or will donate, I have been humbled by your generosity, which has spurred me on since I made my Go Fund Me page (gf.me/u/q3w73p). Please carry on sharing the campaign and its updates, as this was the main aim for creating the page, although the money is greatly appreciated by myself, Plastic Free Cambodia and Surfers Against Sewage.
If you have any have questions about how you can help, aside from contributing to the pre-existing charities around the world, please feel free to contact me on Facebook, Instagram or email me: djbrearley1995@gmail.com
