“Look at us, I knew we picked the right spot,” Dana Winograd exclaimed as she walked through Nim Shue Wan beach in Discovery Bay on a cloudy November afternoon, the wind delivering a much-needed breeze on an otherwise dry and hot day. As the co-founder of Plastic Free Seas (PFS), Winograd wore a T-shirt with an orange smiley life ring on the front and a frowny life ring on the back, a symbol of her organization committed to reducing the scourge of plastic pollution.
To Winograd’s right, more than 40 volunteers sorted through the trash and debris lying near the sidewalk of Nim Shue Wan beach, picking each piece of rubbish with gloved hands and disposing of it in black garbage bags. Although Typhoon Ragasa departed Hong Kong nearly two months ago, its damage is still visible on the beach, with plastic trash scattered around the sand like they were children’s toys.
Despite the daunting task of cleaning up a typhoon-ravaged beach with untold amounts of plastic waste, many volunteers enjoyed their efforts in cleaning up the environment. Parents guided their kids in picking up waste lying around in the sand. Some adults enjoyed the present by quietly picking up rubbish by themselves. Right beside them, a group of young students chatted about their school life as they filtered through the tree branches in search of remaining trash.
The volunteers signed up for “Help Out with Beach Cleaning in Cheung Sha Lan” on November 9th, a community beach cleanup event open to the public and organized by Plastic Free Seas. It is part of a broader environmental push to clean the environment of man-made trash, and a concerted campaign to educate people to reduce plastic waste that pollutes beaches and seas.
The Plastic Waste Problem: A Dire Issue
Hong Kongers produce a lot of plastic waste. According to government statistics, plastic waste made up 21% of the city’s total municipal solid waste disposal in landfills in 2020, with 2,300 tonnes of plastic disposed of every day. However, not all plastic waste resides in city landfills. At least 11 million tonnes of plastic waste entering the world’s oceans every year, some of which end up on Hong Kong’s beaches.
Most plastic marine refuse has land-based origins. First of all, wind disperses plastic waste from garbage containers and landfills, pushing some of it into the sea. Secondly, waste mismanagement by humans can cause plastic waste to end up in the ocean, either accidentally through leakages or incidental decisions such as littering. Thirdly, some plastic waste flows through waterways and into larger masses of water, eventually landing in seawater.
Local currents and tides carry plastic waste in the seas, causing some to wash up on beaches and accumulate alongside other trash disposed of on sandy land. After typhoons, strong winds blow rubbish from the surrounding environments to the shoreline, leading to an increase in plastic waste.
Regardless of origin, plastic waste creates serious environmental impacts on marine and coastal life. When most people think of plastic waste damaging the environment, they picture helpless dolphins entangled in discarded plastic nets or numerous plastic bottle caps found within dead seabirds. However, the most harmful damage plastics can do to marine and coastal environments lies in tiny microplastics, which are smaller than 5 millimeters in size. Some microplastics are manufactured to be small, like plastic pellets. In other instances, larger plastics break down under environmental conditions, forming smaller plastic pieces.
Since microplastics are not biodegradable and take between decades to millennia to disintegrate, they are easily consumed by animals through ingestion or respiration. Dr. Christelle Not, a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, points out that microplastics can first create physical damage to animals through starvation. “For example, there are studies that show that sea birds accumulate plastic in them,” said Not. “They think they are full because their stomach is physically full, but it’s not nutritious, so they are starving.”
More worringly, microplastics are contaminated by toxic chemicals like heavy metals, as well as pathogens in the form of viruses and bacteria. When larger plastics break down into microplastics, chemicals and pathogens are released into the water or an animal’s body, and that toxicity builds up all the way through the food chain, eventually affecting humans who ingest fish or other creatures exposed to microplastics.
Beach Cleanups: A Rising Trend
In recent years, more people are joining beach cleanups. According to data from Clean Shorelines, a government initiative that coordinates beach cleanup efforts, there is a steady increase in beach cleanups in the city, despite a small dip in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have incorporated beach cleanups as part of their broader focus on combating plastic waste in the environment. The Green Earth, a local charitable organization focusing on sustainability, said it organizes beach cleanups with volunteers several times each month. Steven Chan, the group’s Assistant Environmental Affairs Manager, said such activities reflect the urgency of setting up a meaningful producer responsibility scheme. “We often encounter the view that waste generation is solely the responsibility of those who discard it, but this is only partially accurate,” said Chan. “While consumers play a role, the lack of robust producer responsibility—due to industry inaction—hampers effective waste reduction.”
Several groups have dedicated their mission to educating people about the city’s plastic waste problem, driven by the sustained public interest in beach cleanups. Lisa Christensen, the founder of Hong Kong Cleanup, said their group continues to support a consistent volume of cleanups. “There has been steady interest in cleanup activities over recent years, both from the public and from organizations looking to engage in environmental stewardship,” said Christensen. “The volunteer efforts are especially needed after heavy typhoon seasons, as we’ve just had.”
Behind A Cleanup: Communications And Engagement
Founded in 2013, Plastic Free Seas had its origins when Winograd and co-founder Tracy Read first worked at DB Green, a community organization in Discovery Bay. After Read took a trip through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from Japan to Hawaii in 2012, she called on Winograd to start a charity that solely focuses on educating young people and the public about the growing plastic problem. Winograd said that the group’s beach cleanups actively fulfill their vision of having plastic-free seas, which primarily serve to educate people and promote behavioral change.
Communication is key throughout a beach cleanup campaign, both in organizing such events and providing an educational message to its participants. The pre-communication process takes place before the monthly events, as the charity coordinates with HandsOn Hong Kong, a volunteer group, to recruit and manage prospective volunteers. When approved, the volunteering platform notifies participants on what to prepare ahead of the event and how to arrive at the designated beach. Although HandsOn Hong Kong helps Winograd recruit volunteers, pre-cleanup communication is not without its challenges. Some volunteers drop out days before the event, while others get lost while trying to find the meet-up location on the day of the cleanup.
On Sunday afternoon, Winograd patiently waited for the volunteers near the security hut opposite a big sign that read “Lantau Yacht Club” in Discovery Bay. As the time approached 2 p.m., participants greeted the organizer as Winograd ticked off their registration one by one. Volunteers wore wool gloves that protected their hands during the cleanup, while some of the younger participants were running and laughing in anticipation of the cleanup, clearly undeterred by a sign at the entrance gate to Nim Shue Wan beach that simply read “Forget about the dog… beware of alpha.”
After most of the volunteers had arrived, Winograd guided them past the entrance gate for a small trek alongside Nim Shue Wan beach. As volunteers walked along the beach trail, Winograd said Typhoon Ragasa had caused damage that beach cleaning efforts had not entirely erased. Just a few days ago, her team had cleaned up the northern part of the beach, collecting more than 250 kilograms of trash in a two-hour cleanup. Since Ragasa swept past Hong Kong, the group collected a total of 1.5 tonnes of waste in Nim Shue Wan. “It seems like another group has helped clean this part too,” said Winograd as she guided the volunteers through the northern part of Nim Shue Wan. “Now we are cleaning up the second part of this beach.”
The group soon arrived at the designated beach site, with Winograd calling on all participants to gather around her for a quick briefing. She explains that workers use black plastic bags to collect general waste, while Plastic Free Seas designates blue and grey bags for recyclable plastic and metal waste. Winograd also provides bowls to collect plastic cutlery and straws, which document these items to monitor how recent government bans impact the amount of such waste found on beaches.
As volunteers grabbed their black plastic bags and went straight to work after Winograd’s briefing, participants qui. Some volunteers worked alone, sifting through the debris in search of man-made waste. Others decided to work in pairs or small groups, working together to clean the beach despite not knowing each other before the event.
Some individuals joined the cleanup as a meaningful weekend activity that benefits the environment. Violet Lai, a speech-language pathology student, cited the event’s flexibility as a key reason why she joined the cleanup. “It’s like, less time consuming and less restriction, more flexibility, and it’s also meaningful for, like, my weekends,” said Lai.
Most notably, many young people participated as volunteers. Young children were accompanied by their parents, who guided them on what types of plastic are recyclable and which ones should be thrown away. Siblings were seen running across the beach, daring each other to find the most unique form of waste lying in the sand. Teenagers are also active participants in cleanups, with secondary student volunteers banding together to clean as much waste as possible.
Nicolyn Liebenberg, a drug development consultant and event volunteer, brought her daughter and a young family friend to the cleanup. Liebenberg thinks it is important for children to volunteer in such activities, “You actually are physically doing something. And I think it’s important for them to see the impact of how people treat trash and refuse in the ocean, and where it lands on the beach. So it’s a good opportunity.”
Although most participants were amateur beach cleaners or first-time volunteers, there was one man who stood out from the rest for his experience. Sanday Chongo Kabange has been a frequent volunteer at beach cleanups, helping out Plastic Free Seas at such events for the past six years. “It’s one way to give back to the community, find purpose in society, and also to try to contribute towards a cleaner and greener Hong Kong,” he said.
Reflecting on the importance of beach cleaning to the environment, Kabange said, “I think it’s a very good, commendable job. Every little effort is a step towards helping to make shorelines better, cleaner, and to reduce debris on the beaches and on shorelines.”
As the minutes passed by and the black plastic bags started piling up, the cleanup participants began finding more and more unique pieces of trash. From time to time, some of the child volunteers eagerly rush to find Winograd, showing off a piece of unique trash they found. Some of the interesting bits of waste uncovered from the sand include a large sandy towel and pieces of giant cardboard signs promoting past activities in Discovery Bay, while others were more disconcerting. Angel Leung, a secondary school volunteer who joined the event with her friends, said, “We have found syringes, like the ones used for needle shots.”
As the trash bags piled up, the prevalence of plastic trash is hard to ignore. Traces of plastic waste can be found throughout the beach, from the unique discoveries of an old Nokia phone and an early-generation iPhone to more than a dozen plastic bottles collected during the 2-hour session. Randolph Zhong, an engineering student who joined Lai in the cleanup, was shocked by how much microplastic he had collected. “I thought it wouldn’t be that much, but turns out that it’s a lot to the point where you can’t feasibly get it all,” Zhong said.
The Impact Of Cleanups
Although volunteers were not able to fully clean the section of Nim Shue Wan beach, it is evident that the beach has become a lot cleaner than it was two hours ago.
Apart from cleaning up the beach, some volunteers have the oppourtunity to engage in the cleanup’s more scientific aspects.
As Winograd and Kabange measured how much waste was collected during the cleanup, Varuna Mahbubani and her daughter, Mehr, helped calculate the total amount of waste collected, which weighed a total of 169 kg after excluding two large nets and several miscellaneous items that the volunteers could not weigh.
Varuna Mahbubani said she brought her daughter to the cleanup to make her a more responsible citizen. After the event, Mehr Mahbubani said the cleanup made her more aware of the environmental issues facing Hong Kong beaches. The international school student said, “I got to learn a lot more about how humans really are, and it’s like how the reality is with all the plastic and all the trash on beaches that people just leave.”
Some argue that the environmental impacts of beach cleanups are temporary, and plastic waste will return to the beach after it has been cleaned up. Winograd rejects that assessment, noting that all the collected waste is out of the environment and can do no more harm to the coastal habitat. She said, “It doesn’t matter if more comes in. It’s not going back into the ocean, and it’s not staying there to impact on the animals.”
Moreover, beach cleanups serve a social role in the community. Not highlights how beach cleanups are a form of science communication that allows the public to learn through interacting with the environment, prompting them to reflect on what they can do to alleviate the issue. “It’s all about changing your habits, changing your perspective, and that does not happen overnight. You need to be reminded,” said Not. ” I think it’s good to go to clean up regularly, because it’s a reminder of the issue and how bad it is, and how you can also make a change.”
Such scientific communication is evident throughout Winograd’s beach cleanup process, but the most educational component came during her closing speech, urging volunteers to keep in mind what they learned from the experience. With most volunteers returning their last black plastic bags to Winograd, the event organizer first congratulated all the volunteers for their hard work. She highlighted that the key to reducing plastic waste from the beaches is reducing its use in the first place, calling on young participants to adopt waste reduction strategies such as using reusable water bottles and purchasing packaging-free items.
Although beach cleanups allow people to recognize the impact of plastic waste in the environment and inspire change, there are only a rare few community activities that are open to the public. Data from Clean Shorelines show that in the first ten months of 2025, only about 12% of beach cleanups are open to the public, while most events remain private, reserved for schools or corporations.
Private beach cleanups help foster change within corporations to change their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) policies, and motivate young students to influence change within their families and communities. However, Not argued that beach cleanups can go further to maximize their effect in science and environmental communication. “I think we should communicate more about what we know, the limitations, the benefits,” Not said. “We should use that to communicate more on those topics where it’s because it’s not a scientific solution that will solve the plastic issue. It’s also society changes, behavior changes.”
Many younger volunteers reflected on Winograd’s message and how their actions correlate with the environment, including Zhong and Lai, who both said they would participate in more beach cleanups in future weekends. “It’s like, less time consuming and less restriction, more flexibility, and it’s also meaningful for my weekends.”
For long-time volunteers like Kabange, he reflected on how beach cleanups fit into the broader societal change needed to reduce plastic waste. ” The beach cleanup is really not the solution. Really, it is just part of the bigger response to the problem of climate change,” said Kabange. “I think the bottom line, the main solution is to change, is to change our behavior. We should also think about reusing, recycling, repurposing, and returning things that we shouldn’t be consuming so much.”
Asked about whether it is worth it to organize and coordinate beach cleanups, Winograd excitedly said, “Absolutely, 100%. I walked away from that beach cleanup yesterday, really excited about the conversations that I had with people, the impact that I think we made. The impact we made on those individuals, and I think it’s 100% worth it.”
With the final volunteers beginning to depart Nim Shue Wan for their journey home, the cloudy skies made way for the sun to shine through, as if nature gave its nod of approval to the beach cleanup volunteers. The community beach cleanup was a success, but those who are invested in its success hope it is the first step of many.
