National Waste Awareness Day (HPSN) which is always commemorated every February 21 has invited positive actions among young people, especially environmental activists and activists. The Pekanbaru River Ambassadors community initiated by WWF-Indonesia is one of the parties that welcomed the moment with real action. With the theme "Plastic Waste and Its Problems", River Ambassadors Pekanbaru invites young people in Pekanbaru, Riau, to open their insights and awareness of waste, especially plastic waste through a Café Talk event on Friday (01/03) in Pekanbaru, Riau.
The event was attended by around 50 people consisting of the Earth Hour Pekanbaru community, Tiger Heart Riau, YFCC, and various other environmental activist communities. From young people for young people, that's what the discussion looked like. Robi Armilus, founder and chairman of the Social Corner Pekanbaru community, was one of the speakers in the relaxed but serious Café Talk. He explained the role of the government in overcoming the plastic waste problem in Pekanbaru City. In addition, Robi also explained the real actions that he and his community have taken.

Affirming what Robi said, Meyla Suhendra, one of the River Ambassadors explained about the threat of microplastics in the human food chain today. "Microplastics can dissolve in water and be consumed by fish which are then consumed by humans," she explained. In addition, microplastics are also harmful to aquatic biota. Some journals mentioned that out of 504 demersal fish and pelagic fish, about 36.5% found microplastics in their digestive tract (Lusher et al. 2013). Microplastics can enter the body of demersal fish that are carnivorous. The results are interfering with digestion or blocking the absorption process (Wright et al. 2013), causing false satiety (Ryan, 1988), facilitating the transport of chemical contaminants (Hirai et al. 2011), and injuring the walls of the fish's digestive tract (Birk et al. 2016).

Not only explaining insights about plastic, Café Talk also led to concrete actions to reduce the use of plastic. The 2018 Pekanbaru Environmental Ambassador, Aulia Andhini, shared her experience about the simple things she has done to reduce the use of plastic. Aulia shared that she cultivates the habit of bringing shopping bags and tumblers wherever she goes. Thus, she does not increase the potential for waste through the use of plastic bags or plastic bottles of bottled drinks.

The participants were very enthusiastic about the discussion. Many questions and inputs were given by friends of the community. The discussion session was warm, exciting, and lively. They hope that environmental activities like this can be carried out frequently and continuously to spread the virus of environmental care so that today's youth are more concerned about environmental problems.