Jeju island wants to learn from Arran
A journalist has travelled 5,653 miles to learn first-hand how Think About Plastic – Arran are working with the community to reduce the plastic in the sea around the island.
Aeri Lee and her photographer from the Jejumaeil Daily made the trip to Arran from Jeju island in South Korea. Jeju island is the most popular tourist destination in South Korea but the island is experiencing problems with the amount of plastic waste on the island and this has prompted them to research ways of managing this. They came across Arran’s Think About Plastic initiative whilst researching on the web and decided to visit to find out how Arran is tackling the plastic issue.
Jeju is an island which is much larger than Arran with a population of over 500,00 but it has many similarities
– beautiful scenery, stunning and unusual marine life, and a population which is elevated by visitors at certain times of the year.
The newspaper will use Arran’s story to inspire a similar movement on Jeju. During a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Helen How, chairwoman of TAP – Arran Aeri learned, through an interpreter, of the way in which organisations, businesses and individuals throughout Arran are all contributing to make a significant reduction in the amount of single use plastic on Arran. TAP’s aim to ‘reduce the amount of plastic entering the sea around Arran’ relies on everyone. The team from South Korea will take away the message that it is everyone working together and making small changes to the way they purchase, use and dispose of plastic and particularly single-use plastic which can, and does, make a real difference.
The newspaper will run a series about the work of TAP. The Think About Plastic steering group consists of two local councillors, representatives from COAST and Eco-Savvy, the Co-op, local businesses and environmental and educational experts. TAP is a registered charity and operates an accreditation scheme for businesses, a litter monitoring/beach cleaning programme in association with the Marine Conservation Society and an educational and awareness programme.
Jeju ‘dreams of clean seas and making Jeju free of single use plastic’. Helen said: ‘We still have a long journey ahead of us but have made significant progress. It is an honour for Arran and TAP to come to the attention of Jeju and we will do whatever we can to help them on their journey.’