The tide had only just retreated when they arrived.

Armed with sacks, gloves and laughter, a group of teenagers spread across the beach. While tourists searched for shells, these young Indonesians searched for discarded bottles, tangled fishing line and faded plastic wrappers carried ashore by the sea.

Bali

There was no complaining, no groaning about the task ahead. Instead, they laughed, raced each other to the next piece of rubbish and proudly held up unusual treasures pulled from the sand. What could have been a depressing morning somehow felt like a celebration.

I had travelled through Indonesia expecting to find volcanoes, temples and orangutans. I hadn’t expected one of my most memorable encounters to be with Generation Z armed with rubbish bags.

Bali

Across this vast archipelago, a quiet movement is growing. Young Indonesians are refusing to accept polluted beaches and rivers as normal. Schoolchildren, university students and young families are giving up weekends to clean coastlines, paddle rubbish-filled waterways and teach younger children that every bottle and wrapper has value if recycled.

Sulawesi

Some have become social media stars. Others work quietly in their own villages, unnoticed by the world. Yet together they are creating a new culture, one where caring for the environment is something to celebrate rather than complain about.

One of the best-known groups is Pandawara, five friends from West Java whose cleanup videos have inspired millions online. Their call for volunteers has transformed beaches once buried beneath mountains of waste into places where families can once again walk barefoot. Thousands of young people have answered that call, proving that a phone and a sense of purpose can sometimes move mountains of plastic.

In Bali, another generation of innovators has found different solutions. Young entrepreneurs have turned discarded plastic into sandals, furniture and everyday products, showing that yesterday’s rubbish can become tomorrow’s resource. Along rivers, volunteers install barriers to stop floating plastic before it reaches the sea, while schoolchildren learn to sort waste and build eco-bricks from bottles packed tightly with soft plastics.

Indonesia’s environmental challenges are enormous, but that is not the story that stayed with me.

What I remember are the smiles.

I remember children proudly dragging oversized bags across the sand, teenagers posing for photographs beside piles of collected rubbish and young volunteers running back for “just one more bottle” before the morning was over.

The beach looked cleaner when they left.

More importantly, it looked hopeful.

As I watched the children disappear down the beach, still laughing as they searched for one last bottle, I couldn’t help smiling. They weren’t waiting for someone else to solve the problem. They had simply decided to do something themselves.

Watching them, I realised that the future of Indonesia’s coastlines may simply depend on thousands of young hands, working together, one piece of plastic at a time.

Sulawesi

Long after the tide returns, I suspect I’ll remember the laughter more than the rubbish.