Hundreds of volunteers took part on Saturday in a major clean-up of beaches in Bali, popular tourist spots, while monsoon rains caused one of the “worst” strandings of plastic waste ever known, one alarmed. NGOs.
Environmental NGO “Sungai Watch” called the waste strandings the “worst” plastic pollution known on Bali’s beaches.
“We have never seen such an accumulation of plastic waste, one meter high, on the sand. In just six days of cleaning, we collected 25 tonnes, which is a record for us,” notes Gary Bencheghib, founder of the environmental NGO “Sungai Watch”.
On Kedonganan Beach in the south of the island, plastic cups, straws, cutlery and empty coffee bags are scattered on the sand, mixed with plant and wood debris.
About 600 volunteers, including local residents, hospitality workers and tourists, braved a rainy morning to collect trash by hand, filling hundreds of large bags.
Tatiana Komelova, a Russian tourist and volunteer during the operation, said she was shocked at the sight of this waste, and confided that she now wanted to reduce her daily use of plastic.
-“I knew this problem existed, but I didn’t know it was this serious,” she laments. “I use a lot of products made from plastic in my daily life; From now on, I will try to reduce them as much as possible.”
According to an audit, the majority of this plastic waste generally comes from cities in Java, Indonesia’s most populated island, said Gary Bencheghib.
Indonesia is one of the world’s largest contributors of plastic pollution and marine debris, especially when monsoon rains and winds carry mountains of trash from urban areas and rivers into the ocean.
Some of this waste drifts for hundreds of kilometers – the phenomenon increasing between November and March – before washing up on the beaches of the paradise island of Bali, very popular with foreign tourists, particularly for end-of-year holidays. year.
