Jessica and Stefan, a lovely couple come from South Africa. They focus on ocean environmental protection. In order to enhance people’s environmental awareness and bring about education towards marine debris and pollution in general to them, they founded a company called A Cup of Earth. Meanwhile, for the better environment in Hainan, Jessica and Stefan have an initiative called “Splash for Trash” where they encourage volunteers, locals and people from all over the world to join in beach clean-ups. Until now, they have already picked up more than 300kg of marine litter.

“Splash for Trash” is organized in different places of China

They said that they chose Hainan because of the unique environment. “We’re surrounded by the ocean, this is the place where we see not the most marine debris, but the easiest way for us to collect data from what is going around in our oceans”, said Jessica and Stefan.

Jessica and Stefan are doing the beach clean-ups

Hainan is going to start the waste sorting just like Shanghai did, Jessica and Stefan showed their expectation to it. “It's something that we can do a lot, for example, reduce, reuse, and recycle. Those are the three ‘Rs’ we hear all the time. It will teach us how to and teach us what to do for protecting our environment by implementing this.”

Volunteers in the beach clean-ups

“We have tourists coming from all over the world to Hainan. We get pleasure and fulfillment when we see the smiles on people's faces and a beautiful clean beach”. In their environmental activities, Jessica and Stefan feel proud when they found people realized the importance of environmental protection and did the waste sorting. Making a difference by doing these activities is what they benefit most.

Additionally, focusing on providing environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic, Jessica and Steven have their online store that provides those products. For instance, it provides the shopping bags, paper straws and bamboo toothbrushes. They think every time that consumers get a reusable item from the store, they will cut a single use item out of their life.

Volunteers in “Splash for Trash”

Good air quality and rich ocean resources in Hainan also provide lots of opportunities for their environmental protection. They appeal people to not only protect environment in their daily routine but also cultivate the environmental awareness. “We believe one person can make a difference, but together they are the difference”, said Jessica and Stefan.