Jakarta has an occasion called Car Free Day, where it differs from the provincial level and the district level. Car Free Day often shortened as CFD, on the provincial level is held every Sunday. It is located on Sudirman road to MH Thamrin road from 06.00 until 11.00 a.m. local time. The purpose of CFD is to socialize among the people to reduce dependency concerning vehicles. In my opinion, CFD also has a purpose in reducing air pollution.

People who come to CFD would often use the occasion as a venue to exercise, like jogging or running as well as cycling. Occasionally dogs can be seen walking or jogging with their owner. There are people who use the occasion to sell stuff, and there are people who use the venue to campaign. I’m in the category of people that usually comes to CFD in order to campaign. Yesterday on May 5^th, I went to CFD as a volunteer from Divers Clean Action (DCA) in order to participate in an environment campaign activity. An electronic company arranged the event and invited communities along with different companies, where the event is to collect trash along the road of CFD.

The participants were given a shirt to wear along with a clear trash bag and a latex glove. I teamed up with a fellow volunteer from DCA so that the trash bag would be filled up faster. Before anyone started to collect trash, the participants got into a formation that is similar to a parade. My friend and I were in the middle of the formation. So when the activity started, most of the trash lying around have already been picked up by the people at the front. We then broke off from the formation to find other trash lying around. The main road used for CFD is relatively clean, where the sidewalk is usually the place where trash can be found. I suppose one of the reason it’s like that is because there are carts selling foods and drinks there. The trashes my friend and I found varies. We picked up a lot of cigarette butts. We found a sack on the side of the road that contains trash where no food cart was nearby. We collected an instant noodle cup made from styrofoam. Whatever trash we found, we just pick them all up and place them inside the trash bag.

After collecting trash at CFD for a period amount of time, my friend and I returned to the starting point. The trash we collected weighed up to 1.5 kg. I was grumpy when returning because the sun was scorching hot and several times I had an impulse to vomit. Participating in this activity has reminded me why I would usually collect trash underwater. For one, I can’t smell the trash stench. Another is that, trash underwater is usually weightless. Of course I’m more concerned in the effect of what trash underwater can do to life below water. Either way, trash on land or trash below water is a hazard for the environment and we should do anything as well as everything we can for the environment.