Bali Beaches Swamped By Tsunami Of Tourist Garbage

Via The Sydney Morning Herald

A tsunami of plastic rubbish has swamped Bali's iconic beachfront for a week or more, defying daily efforts to clean it up.

Monsoonal rains sweep plastic rubbish down Bali's waterways to the sea every year and onshore winds dump it on the beach, but surfers, locals and business operators say this is the worst they've seen it.

Jason Childs Photo

“The sheer volume of plastic is unprecedented,” says 20-year Bali resident, surf photographer Jason Childs.

“The scary thing is that it's getting worse every year.”

The rubbish slick stretched the length of the island's busiest tourist strip, from Uluwatu in the south, through Kuta and Seminyak, to Canggu in the north.

Jason Childs Photo

Thousands of tonnes of waste generated by tourists and locals is dumped illegally in Bali's inland creeks because the waste collection and processing systems on the island are not up to the task — a symptom of the wider threat to Bali's environment from the tourism onslaught.

Read more about the cleanup effort and check out all the photos from Bali local photographer Jason Childs HERE