Marine plastic has been in the news a lot. Along with the Government of Norway, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners like Hold Norge Rent, GRID-Arendal has been helping to publicize a growing environmental crisis.

And while it’s a big news story, the amount of plastic we can see in the oceans is about 1% of what’s out there. But we can see what’s washed up on the beach everywhere.

Heidi Savelli is with UNEP’s Global Partnership on Marine Litter. She spoke at the Den globale kampen mot marin forsøpling event at Arendalsuka and told a powerful story about the world’s largest beach clean up.

Over 44 weekends, Savelli said, 300 volunteers worked for eight hours a day to collect nearly 3 million kilograms of garbage from Versova Beach in Mumbai, India. The clean up is a “story of collective action and the need to inspire people to come together,” she said.