'Adventure Bag' Cleanup In Siargao, Philippines

If you’ve ever seen a photo of Siargao, you too probably resided with the rest of the population by quickly adding it to your bucket list. An island with a wonderfully unique vibe and culture. Siargao’s special culture is definitely a byproduct of its deeply entrenched surfing community.

Additionally, it’s home to millions of palm trees and many famous surf breaks. The most notable surf break being Cloud 9 in General Luna, a barrelling wave which attracts professional surfers from every corner of the globe.

In 2016, Siargao ‘exploded’ gaining global interest online and on land. Visitors to the island started to pile up, with flights increasing from once a day in 2016 to twelve a day in 2019. Fortunately, both locals and expats are well aware of the increased environmental strain.

Siargao is yet to have the infrastructure to deal with the influx of people, so it’s imperative that the people of the island and those who visit are making positive choices to protect its beauty. It is unspoken law on the island that plastic straws will not be used or sold. Locals are also taking a strong stand on littering and single-use plastics.

Siargao finally held it’s first Adventure Bag Crew cleanup organized by Josh Lynott.

Josh teamed up the Adventure Bag Crew with The Sun Crew and Kermit Surf. The Suncrew are based up north in Siargao, just near Pacifico. They provide surf sessions and board use to the children of Siargao in exchange for their participation in The Sun Crew’s education, sustainability, and skills programs. As part of The Sun Crew’s sustainability programs, they organize weekly beach cleanups.

For this cleanup, The Adventure Bag Crew went to Cemetery beach. A well-known beach and surf spot in General Luna but also home to a lot of rubbish. With local homes scattered in-between the resorts which line the beach, it wasn’t hard to quickly fill up numerous bags of trash. Only recently has there been efforts put in place to collect the trash of locals and surrounding businesses. Whilst this process develops, there are still many locals who are yet to be educated on trash collection and disposal.

We had an amazing turnout for this clean up with a large crew coming from down with Pacifico and all the guests from The Siargao Session hosted by Josh. On top of this, we had people returning for their second Adventure Bag Crew Cleanup along with plenty of others getting involved for their first time. It’s always amazing to have people come from all around the world to make a small but impactful difference.

A big thanks go out to Kermit for providing a local style ‘boodle fight’ afterward for everyone that attended the cleanup. Kermit is another leading force on Siargao in the battle against environmental sustainability.

Wednesday 18th of September 2019

Where did the plastic go?

Rocio Rodriguez Mateo

Saturday 11th of May 2019

Hi Jackson, I am planning to go this year to Philippines. After a lot of research and check your blog, which I love, I decided to go Cebu and Siargao. I just have a doubt cause I have been already in Asia, I went to Bali, and I didn't get any vaccination, but lots of websites recommend to get a vaccination for Philippines. I don't recall that is something you mentioned, just the the tablets for diarrhoea. Did you have any vaccine prior to go into Philippines? Thank you for your blog, you are doing an amazing job and I promise to get my bag and contribute to that cause. Thank you again for what are you doing. We need more people like you, who cares about the planet. Many thanks and I will be waiting for your response, Rocio.