Days 7 & 8: Last Days on Henderson

In the early hours of the morning, we traverse the long kilometer to the southern end of the beach, laden with water and empty Big Bags to commence the last waste collection.

Tristan, Yoann, Pamphile, and Jonathan disembarked this morning from the Plastic Odyssey to assist us. We leave the final traces of our passage beneath our feet on the white sand, which regains its brilliant color without all this garbage.

The last hours of collection are long, and we continue to “bake in the sun.” But we redouble our efforts to arrive at our aptly named “Harbor Camp” at 1 pm. The beach is completely free of garbage! We gather in the shade of the tarp, the stretched tarpaulin that protects us from the sun, near the passage in the reef that we’ve marked with a buoy. We’re relieved to have accomplished this titanic task!

But now it’s time to get all the bags onto the boat, and it’s off to an afternoon of incessant to-ing and fro-ing between the beach and the on-board crane loading the bags onto the deck. On board, Maxime and Baptiste operate the shredder for 14 hours a day. The plastic is shredded, washed, and finally dried. It’s the first time we’ve run our machines for so long, and it’s a real challenge: the swell swings us from side to side, as our waiting position off the east coast of the island is unprotected. The plastic is dirty, giving off a lot of dust due to a mixture of sand and salt that completely covers Baptiste and Maxime’s wetsuits.

We have to shred as much plastic as possible because we won’t be able to store it all on board: 10 big bags reduced in volume by shredding become 1 big bag. And the material that comes out of these material preparation stages yields quality granules, ready to be used to make paving stones, benches, or tables.

Time to break camp. We prepare for our last night on the island, trying to unload as much material as possible to travel “light” tomorrow. Last supper under the stars. We share a bottle of sparkling wine, brought back by the crew, in our coconut bowls.

It’s a rainy night, and we wake up at 1:30 am to pack everything away in a hurry: the cameras are somewhat protected under tarpaulins, but it won’t be long before the waterspouts hit them. Early in the morning, we dry the tents and tarpaulins and pack up. We send all our belongings to the platform, and 7 of us remain on the island: Simon, Alexandre, Morgane, Ricky, Pierre, Ludwig, and Olivier.

On the back of the plaque are the names of all the participants in this crazy adventure.

Many thanks to all of you. This adventure would never have come to fruition without everyone’s hard work. It will go down in history as the first “Impossible Cleanup” mission. Enough to make us want to take on even crazier challenges!

On Henderson, animals return to the clean beach: a green turtle visits the south side, birds descend from the cliff edges to the north. Are they happy without all that plastic? Disoriented? We’ll never know. But we do know that the best thing to do after this man-made disaster was to return them to their native habitat as intact as possible.

As we sink our last flippers into the reef to reel in our mooring, we look back one last time at the clean beach. As the sun sets, the wildlife can resume its rhythm.