Australian entrepreneur hailed for cleaning Philippines’ trash-strewn river – but will it last?

Mike Smith of Zero Co recently mobilised a team of more than 250 environmental rangers and volunteers to clean up a portion of the Taguig-Pateros River located south of Metro Manila, dredging up 147,000kg of garbage from the waters, mostly plastic.

Zero Co, which offers body and household care products in single-use plastic-free packaging made from recycled ocean plastic waste, initially started removing trash on Australian beaches such as Queensland K’gari Island.

Smith said a portion of Zero Co’s profits funds clean-up operations around waterways polluted with marine plastic waste.

According to the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the country was the third-largest source of ocean waste worldwide, prompting Smith to roll out longer-term campaigns to revive Manila’s waterbodies.

The Southeast Asian nation discards an estimated 3.3kg of plastic waste per person into the ocean, with over 4,800 rivers emitting more than 350,000 metric tonnes of non-degradable litter.

“That was a light bulb moment, when we thought to ourselves, if we want to have the biggest possible impact on this problem, then let’s go to the source of the problem,” Smith said.

He arrived in the Philippines in 2023 and spent six weeks visiting the most polluted water systems, identifying potential sites through satellite images on Google Earth.

Smith picked Metro Manila’s rivers and tributaries for the project that scooped up garbage from the Tanza Marine Tree Park and the San Juan River, one of the longest streams running through the capital region.

He also hired Francis Chua, a Manila-based project manager, to coordinate with the DENR’s officials to deploy rangers and volunteers for the clean-up drives that largely went