Yang Shuwen (right) and fellow volunteers sort plastic bottles for the Blue Circle project in Changtu, Zhejiang province, in January. LI SHANGYI/CHINA DAILY

A fisherman's wife from a small seafaring community in Changtu town of Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, has become the unlikely catalyst for an environmental campaign that has changed local habits and created a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future for the residents.

For years, ocean plastics had hindered the fishermen in Changtu, polluting the waters and spoiling catches.

In 2020, Hu Songsu, a 60-year-old local and wife of a fisherman, had finally had enough and struck out on her quest to change minds and attitudes and clean up the waters around the island of 13,000 people.

Five years on, as a fisherman docks his trawler and steps off holding a net full of plastic bottles, Hu deftly takes it off his hands and captures an image of the bottles via a dedicated app, which records the time and location details such as longitude and latitude.

Born and raised by the sea, Hu has been involved with fishing in some way her entire life.

"My father and my husband are both fishermen," she said. "Our town has no other industry, and people here rely on fishing for a living.

"Decades ago, we could easily fish not far from shore, but those days are long gone," she said.

With increasing ocean pollution, water quality around the island declined, and fish numbers dwindled, impacting local fishermen's income.

"Around 2020, I had the idea to collect plastic waste from the sea," Hu said. "I called on other fishermen's wives to join me and urged the fishermen to collect plastics while out at sea."

These women, known as yusao (fishermen's wives) in Chinese, have traditionally handled fishing safety, and resolved disputes among fishermen. Today, they've taken up the mantle as volunteers dedicated to protecting the marine environment as well.

Hu said that some of the ocean plastic came from the fishermen themselves who live and work for extended periods at sea as they lack the space to store their garbage, and so she set about encouraging them to change their ways and find a better solution.

"We called on the fishermen to store garbage on the boat, collect floating plastics and bring them back to shore to reduce pollution," Hu said.

Once the plastic waste reaches land, it can be recycled, she said.

Thanks to the collective efforts of these women and fishermen, in the past five years, a total of over 110,000 plastic bottles have been collected from the local waters. Over 80,000 old boat batteries have also been collected.