Yahoo – AFP,
Bagus SARAGIH, December 28, 2017
The Indonesian holiday island has become an embarrassing poster child for the country's trash problem (AFP Photo/SONNY TUMBELAKA) |
Kuta
(Indonesia) (AFP) - Bali's palm-fringed Kuta beach has long been a favourite
with tourists seeking sun and surf, but nowadays its golden shoreline is
disappearing under a mountain of garbage.
Plastic
straws and food packaging are strewn between sunbathers, while surfers bobbing
behind the waves dodge waste flushed out from rivers or brought in by swirling
currents.
"When
I want to swim, it is not really nice. I see a lot of garbage here every day,
every time," Austrian traveler Vanessa Moonshine explains.
"It's
always coming from the ocean. It's really horrible," she adds.
Often
dubbed a paradise on earth, the Indonesian holiday island has become an
embarrassing poster child for the country's trash problem.
The
archipelago of more than 17,000 islands is the world's second biggest
contributor to marine debris after China, and a colossal 1.29 million metric
tons is estimated to be produced annually by Indonesia.
The waves
of plastic flooding into rivers and oceans have been causing problems for years
-- clogging waterways in cities, increasing the risk of floods, and injuring or
killing marine animals who ingest or become trapped by plastic packaging.
Officials
in Bali have declared a "garbage emergency" across a stretch of coast
that
includes Jimbaran, Kuta and Seminyak beaches (AFP Photo/SONNY TUMBELAKA)
|
The problem
has grown so bad that officials in Bali last month declared a "garbage
emergency" across a six-kilometre (3.7-mile) stretch of coast that
included popular beaches Jimbaran, Kuta and Seminyak.
Officials
deployed 700 cleaners and 35 trucks to remove roughly 100 tons of debris each
day to a nearby landfill.
"People
with green uniform were collecting the garbage to move it away but the next day
I saw the same situation," said German Claus Dignas, who claimed he saw
more garbage with each visit to the island.
"No
one wants to sit on nice beach chairs and facing all this rubbish," he
added.
Bali's
rubbish problem is at its worst during the annual monsoon season, when strong
winds push marine flotsam onto the beach and swollen rivers wash rubbish from
riverbanks to the coast, according to Putu Eka Merthawan from the local
environment agency.
"This
garbage does not come from people living in Kuta and nearby areas," he
told AFP.
"It
would be suicidal if Kuta people were doing it."
War on
waste
Some 72
kilometres from Kuta, Mount Agung has been threatening to erupt for two months,
prompting tourists to cancel visits and displacing tens of thousands of
villagers living within a 10 kilometre-radius of the volcano's crater.
Indonesia
is the world's second biggest contributor to marine debris after
China (AFP
Photo/SONNY TUMBELAKA)
|
But the
island's waste problem is no less of a threat, said I Gede Hendrawan, an
environmental oceanography researcher from Bali's Udayana University.
"Garbage
is aesthetically disturbing to tourists, but plastic waste issue is way more
serious," he told AFP.
"Microplastics
can contaminate fish which, if eaten by humans, could cause health problems
including cancer."
Indonesia
is one of nearly 40 countries that are part of UN Environment's Clean Seas
campaign, which aims to halt the tide of plastic trash polluting the oceans.
As part of
its commitment, the government has pledged to reduce marine plastic waste by 70
percent by 2025.
It plans to
boost recycling services, curb the use of plastic bags, launch cleanup
campaigns and raise public awareness.
Still, the
scale of the problem facing Indonesia is huge, due to its population of more
than 250 million and poor waste processing infrastructure.
Hendrawan,
who says both locals and tourists are responsible for the island's rubbish
problem, urged authorities to invest more resources to tackle the problem.
"The
Bali government should spare more budget to raise people's awareness to take
care of local rivers, not to dump waste," he said.
"The
central government should boost the campaign to reduce use of plastic packaging
and ban free plastic bags at convenient stores."
Bali's palm-fringed Kuta beach has long been a favourite with tourists seeking sun and surf, but nowadays its golden shoreline is disappearing under a mountain of garbage. pic.twitter.com/Y27qrxapmy— AFP news agency (@AFP) December 28, 2017
No comments:
Post a Comment