I had just started snorkeling in a lovely cove in Bali when something brushed against my leg. Thinking it was a fish, I looked down. It was a plastic shopping bag.
A moment later, it happened again. This time, it was a plastic bottle. Almost immediately, something else brushed against me. Again, more plastic.
In fact, as I looked around me, I realized the water was filled with trash, most of it petroleum-based single-use products. I gave up snorkeling. The water was so thick with detritus that it would be nearly impossible to see anything else.
A couple of days later, we were walking on one of the most beautiful black sand beaches I have seen anywhere in the world. It was off the beaten path from the usual tourist spots on the island and was mostly visited by residents of the tiny village we were staying in. The sand was lovely until you looked at the high tide mark. There, the waves had deposited piles and piles of garbage. The debris was at least six inches deep and six feet wide and stretched along the beach for as far as the eye could see.
Plastic bottles, plastic bags, straws, juice boxes, junk food wrappers, flip flops, small toys, used diapers. Anything that could float in on a wave had. And then it sat there on that beautiful beach, very likely for all of eternity.
Almost everywhere we went in Bali, we saw a lot of trash, particularly along the roadsides. Loose items were everywhere, as well as full plastic bags of garbage. We also frequently saw small piles of trash being burned and the acrid scent of burning plastic filled our nostrils. This is how garbage was handled in Bali when we were there in 2015, although the country is trying to grapple with its plastic problem.
I’m not going to pass judgment on how a nation deals with its refuse because the fact is that here in the US, we create a disproportionate amount of trash for our population and far too much of it ends up in giant holes in the earth or is shipped to other countries.
A couple of years after we were in Bali, friends of ours were there to dive in various spots around the island. They told us later that they encountered vast amounts of garbage offshore in deeper waters and that it was the worst they had ever seen anywhere.
I’m sharing this story mostly because our experience was so unexpected. Social media had led me to expect pristine beaches, not garbage piles. And of course, there’s the larger unfolding global environmental crisis, of which plastic use is but one of the issues.
Thank you Jen for highlighting this problem. We experienced something similar when we visited a small Shetland island and saw trash on the beach that had floated in from somewhere in the North Sea. It’s jarring and it makes you want to help! I know some organizations are trying to tackle it and doing some innovative things but we need every country to get together and sort this out. We can’t afford to keep polluting our oceans.
I'd "like" this post but there's nothing to enjoy. Thanks for raising awareness!