Incredible photos show mountains of plastic bottles washed up on idyllic honeymoon islands

[arcane1]

It's renowned for its luxury accommodation, turquoise waters and breath-taking beaches.

However, these images show the darker side to the Maldives - with huge amounts of rubbish washed up on the island’s pristine sands.

Award-winning filmmaker Alison Teal, 27, visited Thilafushi – or Trash Island - an artificial island created as a municipal landfill situated to the west of Malé.

..There are more than 400 tonnes of rubbish dumped on the Maldives’ island every day - a figure attributed largely to the tourist industry on which the chain of atolls relies. Each visitor generates 3.5kg of waste per day.









Much much more, with video too:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774725/Incredible-photos-mountains-plastic-bottles-washed-idyllic-honeymoon-islands-Maldives.html

[tblue37]

1. KnR. nt

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. That is disgusting, horrifying and WRONG.

Haven't these people ever heard of recycling?

[Scootaloo]

3. Behold; the landscape of capitalism

[EX500rider]

14. The landscape of communism looked even worse.

[JDPriestly]

19. At least just as bad anyway.

[EX500rider]

31. Let me know when the West starts abandoning nuclear subs...

....or sinking the reactors to get rid of them...

[truebluegreen]

36. So the landscape of capitalism is all good then.

[EX500rider]

37. Which economic system is it again that has no waste products?

That's right none.

But it/was the communist one that is the worst offender.

[truebluegreen]

38. See post#36

and stop implying that the stupid shit we as capitalists do is OK because Commies Were Worse.

[EX500rider]

39. And i repeat: Which economic system is it again that has no waste products?

[pansypoo53219]

29. crapitalism, or amerikanism.

[TeeYiYi]

4. Wow.

Nothing else to say.

Ring ring; China's calling. They want their plastic back.

TYY

[Fred Sanders]

5. The bottles have not been washed up into mountains, that is the municipal trash island collection.

[arcane1]

6. Correct. The headline is overly dramatic, though some still washes up.

The point is to outline how much trash is created by the industry, and the society as a whole. There is no rational excuse for it.

[longship]

9. Yup! And it's the Daily Mail.

You ought to read what they say about UFOs, Big Foot, etc.

Yawn!

[coldbeer]

10. Trash

So much trash ... every week. The plastic gets
overwhelming, Tupperware, plastic cups, plastic
bowls, more plastic cups. Miss the old corner store
and brown paper.

And hording and junk-collecting! Don't buy it unless
ypu need it. Give me space and drink beer and sell
the cans and drink more beer!

no trash!

[tabbycat31]

17. This

However, recycling should be an option. Gets rid of the plastic and paper.

[hunter]

7. Those could be scenes from Idiocracy...

A lovely day at the beach!

[KurtNYC]

30. Idiocracy is profound because it is so close to the way we live now.

[FreakinDJ]

8. Its a shame those countries over there litter like that

And yes I have been to some of them that use their rivers and streams as a dumping ground. First rain or monsoon to come along and it all washes out to sea

But as you can see from this Ocean Surface Currents map ALL that trash came from neighboring countries if not the Maldives themselves

[blondie58]

16. This is so incredibly Sad

And it States in the Article that a Plastic bottle from the US was one of the bottles. Why is the ocean treated like a garbage dump?

This reminds me of a short film that I saw on a Midway a Island once.
It brought tears to my eyes.
Http://www.midwayjourney.com

[FreakinDJ]

28. It might have been shipped from the US - but it was dumped there

The point I am trying to make is it is the LOCALs that are using the ocean for a waste dump.

[yuiyoshida]

11. I wonder if anyone has thought of maybe

gathering it all up and either recycling it ..or dropping the whole thing into an active volcano.

[Hestia]

20. That is an interesting thought...hmm...

Remember when during the Bush I presidency all we heard was about packaging and how it was filling the landfills? Now it is worse that it was back then.

[logosoco]

42. That is what I was thinking. The photos almost make it look like it is already sorted trash,

mainly plastics. Seems like putting a recycling plant nearby would make it easy to make this once used plastic into plastic that can be used again. Getting rid of the pile and obtaining new material for use and thus avoiding making "virgin" plastic.

[ramapo]

12. Sadly not unusual

Never been anywhere as exotic as the Maldives but anytime I've been to a Caribbean Island, I've been struck by the amount of garbage. We have lots of land in which to hide our crap. These small islands don't.

[Nay]

33. Brazil is the same way. We went on a half-day boat cruise among some small

islands; we stopped at one island for lunch, and I, just exploring, went beyond some high rocks on the shore only to find gobs of plastic (and other) trash all over the beach on the other side. They'd groomed the beach where the tourists usually stayed, but the rest looked like a third-world dump. Quite an eye-opener.

[DFW]

13. Alison Teal?!?!?!

Otherwise knows as Alison Blehert-Koehn. Yeah, she wishes she were still 27. She's a sweet kid, but she's not a naturalist. She's a surfer from Hawaii who got herself the ultimate gig finding people to finance her surf-around-the-world desires in a series called "Alison's Adventures."

She was also my daughter's roommate for two years at HPA in Waimea on the Big Island.

She has done some very positive work in pointing out what we are doing to our seas. But she's also one of those young adults who wouldn't have the slightest clue who Joe Biden is. She starred in something called "Naked and Afraid" about a year ago (or earlier this year? we don't get that in Germany). She leads a somewhat sheltered life, albeit with scenery and locations most people would kill for.

[KoKo]

26. I understand if you have personal experience with this photo...

But still...we know terrible waste is washing up and that the Plastic Patches in the Ocean sloshing around are harming wildlife.

So whether she is flaky and exploiting something for her own goals...doesn't mean she might not care a bit or that someone who cares is using her to get message out to the rest who do care and "Celebrity" involvement does cause attention to causes that many of us Dems/Environmentalists care about.

But...I go back to Johnny Cash and my post here about the Greed of Wall Streeters who think they can get away with the Globalization/Offshoring Jobs and marketing War as a Good Thing for Globilization.

No one is a good guy, gal here.

My post DOWNTHREAD...with Johnny Cash's song.. (disregard the religious aspects if you can)...he was going for the GREED we can relate to...although he was a religious man...I look at moving it beyond that to the GREED.

Good to see you around here when you post, btw.

[panader0]

40. We had a surf spot on Oahu that we called Flies. (for the obvious reason)

It was also a man made area with huge boulders you would have to climb down to the waves, and large heaps of trash above.
The spot was known for having sharks, attracted by the garbage. Once, out with some friends, we all became nervous, seeing that quick glimpse out of the corner of your eye. We went in, having to time your climb onto the rocks between waves, and when we climbed up where we could see, there were four or five good sized sharks visible.

[DFW]

41. Scary stuff

I was content to try some waves I wasn't ready for at Makenna on Maui, got dumped head first onto the hard coral, and crawled from the water bleeding form every place I could bleed from. Any sharks in the area would have smelled me from a mile away. Cured me for good, although now that the water on the east coast has warmed up so much, we are getting great whites off the coast of Cape Cod in the summer. Needless to say, we don't go far offshore these days, and even then only at low tide.

[mopinko]

15. what bullshit.

its a dump. not washed up from the sea.
jeebus people.

[arcane1]

21. Yeah, the headline sucked. Daily Mail after all.

[ffr]

23. What's the elevation of that atoll? It wouldn't take much to wash the dump away.

According to what's listed on the WWW, the average elevation of the Maldive's Islands is 1.5 meters. (Google)



And it's still an unsustainable situation. All that exposed waste and more building up every day with no solution? What is the solution?

[MissDeeds]

18. Oh sweet mother of god

That just breaks my heart. I cannot believe what we have done to this planet.

[ffr]

24. One good storm away from reality.

I'm thinking so.

[workinclasszero]

22. The Human race will drown in its own filth

and despoil this once beautiful world in the process.

But eventually hundreds of thousands of years from now the earth will recover.

But humanity? Eh..I doubt it. We are too stupid, greedy and short sighted to survive much longer it would seem.

[KoKo]

25. Well..Trash and Climate Change due to our Waste will affect both

the RICH & THE POOR.

Something the Wall Streeters who vacation and own parts of those (formerly) Beautiful, Idyllic Islands NEVER IMAGINED in their "Control It All" because "I OWN IT's" never imagined.

Even their "Magic Condo Boat" where they paid to Escape from it all with their Billions might not make it through the MUCK that they helped perpetuate as they Sold Off The World in their Quest for Billions of Profits..thinking THEY would NEVER be Touched or Impacted from what they Wrought with their Evil Souls.

We might fare better here battling in our "HOMELAND" than they do floating in their PARADISES and Owning Choice Spots in Isolated Islands all over the Globe where they thought they'd DO BETTER THAN THE REST.

They are clueless in their Greed..

I'm reminded of Johnny Cash's song..."God's Gonna Cut You Down." Even if one is not Religious...one could say: "Greed's Gonna Cut You Down." It comes down to that......in the end.

----------


Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down
Music video by Johnny Cash performing God's Gonna Cut You Down. (C) 2006 American Recordings, LLC & The Island Def Jam Music Group

[mountain grammy]

27. Plastic, another product of fossil fuels fouling our planet.

[SammyWinstonJack]

34. ...

[Liberal_in_LA]

35. wow. scary and sad