Stopping the Garbage Before It Reaches the Sea: Andrew Lien's Story of Finding an Exit for Ocean Waste
KURIO Editorial|Yesterday|8 min read
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Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
Key Takeaways
•Andrew Lien had an NTU Electrical Engineering degree and a modeling background — he could have walked a tech-industry or in-front-of-camera path — yet he chose to address the ocean-waste issue he had long carried in his heart
•In Bali, he saw a thousand people doing a beach cleanup but still unable to keep up with the waves, and understood that beach cleanups alone are not the answer
•He founded WaveNova, building resource recovery stations on remote Indonesian islands so that villages have an exit before their waste flows to the sea
Some people have been seen — and then chose to turn their gaze toward places that are rarely seen.
For Andrew Lien (連潔琳), life originally had more than one path.
A graduate of National Taiwan University's Department of Electrical Engineering, he could have walked into the tech industry, like many of his classmates, heading to Silicon Valley, Hsinchu Science Park, or any other socially recognized industry. He had also been a model — appearing in the film 《下半場》(We Are Champions), in MVs, and in other visual work — close to the camera, with a stage of his life when he was noticed and recognized.
It was a clear, respectable, easy-to-understand life route. But then, he went to Indonesia and founded WaveNova, a nonprofit focused on ocean waste.
Not to travel, not to find a romantic life, not to prove he was special.
But to face something heavy, dirty, and very real: ocean waste.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
He Was Close to the Standard Answer, but Didn't Hand Himself Over to It
In Chinese-speaking societies, success often looks like an answer sheet someone else has already written.
Study well, get into a good school, find a good job, buy a home and a car, get married and have children, live a stable life. There's nothing wrong with this path — it's a life many people work hard for years to earn.
Andrew had no shortage of chances to walk it, either.
But at 27, 28, he began thinking seriously: for his next step, should he keep building a startup in tech, or turn toward the ocean-waste issue he had been carrying in his heart for a long time?
He knew it was a very high-risk choice.
But precisely because he was still young, he felt: if there's something you really want to do, maybe this is the time to start.
So he chose the thing he had long been carrying.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
He Had Been Seen — Then He Wanted More Important Things to Be Seen
Before founding WaveNova, Andrew had been seen in another way.
Modeling, film, MVs, visual work — they had brought him close to the camera, close to a life of being noticed. To many, it was an appealing path.
But he gradually realized: being seen isn't the endpoint. What matters more is, when you have the ability to make people stop and look at you, where do you bring that attention.
After founding WaveNova, he re-understood what social media and visuals were for. Social media used to be more about displaying himself; now, he uses it to document a nonprofit growing from zero, and to let more people actually feel the ocean-waste problem.
Once, he casually replied to a post about ocean waste on Threads and accidentally created over a million views. What mattered more: that traffic didn't only stay online. It actually made more people aware of the problem — and some were even willing to come with him to clean up on the ground.
In that moment, he found new meaning in social media. To be seen, it turned out, doesn't only have to be about being remembered yourself. It can also be about making problems that nobody wanted to see, finally seen by more people.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
Some Dreams Don't Suddenly Appear — They Quietly Grow Inside
Andrew says that ocean waste has always been one of his life dreams.
It wasn't an impulse after a trip, nor passion after suddenly being moved by an issue. Around the age of seven or eight, environmental awareness had slowly planted a seed in his heart. Back then, works like the documentary 《正負二度C》(+-2°C) helped more people become aware of environment and climate.
But seeds from childhood don't usually grow into a clear decision right away.
It wasn't until later, when he began hiking and diving — truly stepping into nature — that he saw places that had once been beautiful become different because of the traces humans had left behind.
That feeling wasn't abstract. Not the environmental protection of textbooks, not the sustainability of slogans, but you actually standing there, watching beauty being destroyed.
Lien isn't against technological development, nor does he deny civilizational progress. He just has a very simple thought.
"What comes in must go out. All forms of life have to find a balance to live together."
He doesn't want to escape modern civilization — he wants to ask, as civilization moves forward: where do the things we leave behind actually go?
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
A Thousand People Bend Down, Yet Can't Pick Up All the Waste the Waves Bring
What truly shook Andrew was a beach he saw in Bali during the rainy season.
That day, he joined a local beach cleanup. Wave after wave brought waste onto the shore, as if pouring endlessly from the other side of the sea. About a thousand people were there — local students, soldiers, police, volunteers. Everyone bent down, picking up the waste bag by bag.
But the waste didn't stop, and neither did the waves.
In that moment, what Lien felt wasn't passion — it was a deep powerlessness. For the first time, he very clearly felt how small humans really are. Even with a thousand people working on the beach, the waste kept being pushed ashore as if it had no end.
"It was a war with no end."
Many people think cleaning up ocean waste just means going to the beach to pick it up. But standing on that beach, he understood: beach cleanup can be a start — but it can never be the whole answer.
Because the speed of picking will never catch up to the speed of throwing.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
What Really Has to Be Addressed Is the System That Has Stopped Working
Andrew gradually came to understand that ocean waste doesn't become a problem only when it reaches the shore.
Earlier than that, the problem has already happened.
On many remote islands in Indonesia, waste infrastructure is severely lacking. In the best case, waste gets sent to a landfill; in the worse case, it gets dumped where nobody sees. When the rainy season arrives, water washes that waste into rivers, into the sea, and finally back ashore in wave after wave.
So what they do now isn't only beach cleanup — it's building resource recovery stations.
Starting from exploring new villages, building local teams, building connection with residents through cleanups, then setting up recovery stations near villages so that nearby communities' waste can be collected, sorted, and processed.
It doesn't sound that romantic, and it may not immediately turn into pretty pictures, but it's closer to the core of the problem. Because in many places, it isn't that nobody wants to do anything — it's that no one has given them a method they can actually keep doing.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
On That Small Island, He Saw Kindness That Was Trapped
On the small island of Gili Gede, off Lombok in Indonesia, Andrew saw another reality.
On the island, there's a small organization formed by locals: GPS_ggi. They had been organizing village cleanups on their own, working to maintain the environment of their own island. It wasn't that they didn't care, nor that they weren't taking action.
It's just that the island was too remote.
There was nowhere to send the waste, and no resources to pay for hauling it away. Even if people on the island were willing to pick up waste again and again, more waste would keep drifting in from other places.
Sometimes what's most powerless isn't that no one is willing to do anything — it's that someone has already started, yet stays trapped in a place with no resources, no exit, no system.
Andrew's team began working with them, giving these originally trapped efforts a new exit. A recovery station isn't only a place to process waste — it's also a signal: this place isn't forgotten; the people here don't have to hold it up alone.
Sometimes change isn't a grand slogan. It's letting a village know, for the first time, that waste has somewhere to go. Letting a group of people feel, for the first time, that someone really does care about this place.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
The Hard Part Isn't Picking Up Waste — It's Choosing a Path That Isn't Understood
When Lien decided to found WaveNova and truly throw himself into ocean waste, many of those around him reacted with disbelief.
Some asked: "You're going to pick up garbage?"
Others didn't understand why a person with a good degree, with chances to enter tech, would give up the safer, more promising opportunities to do something this risky.
These doubts aren't hard to understand.
Because from the outside, it looked like he was leaving a very good path to walk a harder, more uncertain, harder-to-define one. But for Andrew, it wasn't just "picking up garbage."
It was something he had always cared about.
Something he had carried since childhood, and reconfirmed, again and again, as a grown person in the mountains, the seas, the broken landscapes.
Often the hardest part isn't doing the thing itself — it's that you know why you started, but the world doesn't always understand right away.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
Chasing a Dream Was Never Only Romance
Choosing this path didn't come without cost.
Andrew says the biggest cost has been being long apart from his partner. Because the project requires him to spend long periods in Indonesia, and his girlfriend is in Taiwan, two people who had been walking together suddenly had to learn how to find a new balance across distance.
They adapt to this change bit by bit, through ongoing communication and listening. The earlier Lien might have spent a lot of time on various social activities; the current him has started dividing his time more carefully, and slowly understands that some things aren't as necessary as he had thought — what truly matters is giving time to the people and things worth it.
What he's most grateful for is that before anything had been seen, his girlfriend was already standing at the start with him.
Back then, he didn't have much visibility, and he didn't really know how to edit videos. She filmed with him, taught him to edit, invited friends to join in, and went with him on his first scouting trip to Bali.
Many people later saw the project slowly take shape, but in the earliest, most uncertain, most self-doubting moments, it was she who walked through those hard parts with him.
Chasing a dream was never only enthusiasm and distance.
Often it also takes someone who, before you have any results, is willing to stand with you and believe.
Credit: IG/@andrewzc0808
Becoming the Protagonist of Your Life Isn't Walking the Most-Approved Path
For Andrew, success isn't turning life into a pretty résumé — it's choosing, after knowing what you truly value, to keep doing it step by step.
So if he could go back to the self at the start, what he most wants to say is:
"I'm so glad you made that decision so resolutely."
It's not a victory declaration. It's more like the words of someone who, after walking through uncertainty, doubt, and cost, can finally look back and tell himself: it's good that I didn't leave that dream in my heart and pretend it wasn't important.
Andrew knows this isn't a dream that will be completed quickly.
Tomorrow, the waves will still bring waste ashore; the problem is still big, the road is still long. In the short term, he hopes to bring this system to more islands in eastern Indonesia, so that more villages can have an exit to catch their waste before it flows out to sea.
Maybe it's hard, slow, and won't be seen by many right away. But some things, precisely because no one knows how long the wait will be, need someone to start first.
If he had to leave one line for those who are lost, who want to change but are afraid of reality, Andrew would say:
"Be brave enough to chase what you truly want to do."
It sounds simple, but it feels like the answer he's been walking toward all along.
Because the saddest thing in life isn't choosing a hard path.
It's knowing clearly what you care about, yet leaving it in your heart, only to find out later that you never really set out.
Andrew Lien (連潔琳) graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University and has worked as a model, appearing in the film 《下半場》(We Are Champions), MVs, and visual work. He later founded WaveNova, a nonprofit focused on ocean waste, building resource-recovery systems on remote Indonesian islands so that waste has an exit before it flows out to sea.
▶What is WaveNova?
WaveNova is a nonprofit founded by Andrew, focused on the ocean-waste issue. Beyond beach cleanups, they explore new villages, build local teams, and set up resource-recovery stations on remote Indonesian islands so that nearby villages' waste can be collected, sorted, and processed.
▶Why did he leave tech to work on ocean waste?
After graduating from NTU EE, he could have joined the tech industry like many of his classmates. But at 27, 28, he thought seriously about his next step. Since the ocean-waste issue had long been in his heart, and he was still young, he felt this was the time to start. He chose something heavy and very real, rather than the safer, more easily understood path.
▶What did he see in Bali?
During the rainy season, he joined a beach cleanup with about a thousand people — students, soldiers, police, and many volunteers. Everyone bent down to pick up waste bag by bag, but the waves kept bringing more onto the shore. In that moment he understood: picking can never catch up to throwing — the core of the problem is earlier, in the system before waste reaches the sea.
