A Dutch non-governmental organisation ClearRivers (formerly known as Recycled Island Foundation) Clear Rivers will be visiting Sandakan this year to help with designs for litter traps.

Clear Rivers will also offer loan of a recycled plastics litter trap design and ship it in Sandakan for local use.

They will also be sharing knowledge on a recycled plastic brick, developed by another Dutch designer, with huge potential for local habitation use.

The idea of bringing in the Dutch people and experts stemmed from another local non-governmental organisation Future Alam Borneo (FAB) from Sandakan.

FAB has been looking at the steady increase in pollution locally for years and observed little effort to ‘get dirty’ finding the source of the pollution and tackling it at the source.

“The issue has always been someone else’s problem.

“The decline in civic-mindedness troubled them to the extent that they went searching for solutions that might be transferable to Sandakan.”

In 2020, FAB won a grant from Yayasan Hasanah ( the foundation of Khazanah Nasional), to finance a year-long project called Sandakan Plastics Solutions Project.

Working directly with two water villages, the project aims to better understand the communities’ consumption patterns and waste generation, as baseline data of single use plastic creation. 

FAB is also supported by various partners such as the Dutch ClearRivers and Precious Plastics (blueprints for recycling machines), Tonibung Create Borneo, technical partners in machine design & assembly from Penampang.

“FAB hopes to process the recyclable plastic and create a series of new products from the waste, in an attempt to replicate a more sustainable cycle of a product’s life.”

For more information about FAB’s progress on their projects, visit their social media pages at Instagram and Facebook.