WHY THE BEACHES ARE DIRTY.... (I wrote this for the FB group Canggu Community, but it may also be useful here.) If youre new in town, you may be puzzled as to why the beaches are covered in Plastic trash, and if youve been curious and asked, locals may have told you it comes from Jawa/elsewhere. Others of you may be wanting to clean the beach and be frustrated that the Balinese dont seem to want to participate. Im going to try to bring some clarity to the situation... The Balinese have always burnt their rubbish or swept it into the drain/sawah/river. In the days before plastic, there was no problem as everything rotted down and disappeared. Even when plastic arrived the problem was manageable because, as rice farmers, the Balinese didnt have a lot of spare cash to spend on noodles, cookies, and bottles/cups of Aqua. The problem is that the tourist dollar has now arrived in a big way, so many Balinese have money in their pocket, looking for convenience products to complement their busy working lifestyle. Circle K & Indomaret are everywhere and everything comes in plastic packaging before being put into a plastic bag. But in the villages (like the one I live in) there is no refuse/rubbish/trash collection system like we get in the West, so even the diligent have a choice of burning their trash or sweeping into the drain. The plastic gets caught up in the narrow waterways full of tree roots and other obstacles waiting for a big rainfall, when it dislodges, enters the river and then the ocean. If its still buoyant, the chances are itll end up on the beach, ready for someone to collect it or get wrapped around a poor surfers leg while he waits to catch a wave. And this problem is going to get worse before it gets better. Pampers/disposable diapers/nappies are becoming affordable ... think on that. The Government have a lot on their plate here. Primary school education and basic health care are not free (& unaffordable for some), there is no sewerage system outside of some urban centres, roads are too small and in poor repair for the traffic they handle and so one can understand that implementation of refuse collection & processing infrastructure is not high on their priority list. There is some light at the end of the tunnel. Initiatives like Bye Bye Plastic Bags are trying to get 1,000,000 signatures on a petition to ban plastic bags in Bali. There are some great recycling projects where they collect your trash for a small fee and clean, sort and recycle it. There is a guy making bricks out of plastic packaging. All good but what we really need is a strategic government program to collect and process trash across the island. Anti-littering laws that were enforced would also help, as would some public trash bins in popular areas. What would really help the case to get that program is some publicity about dirty beaches and consequently unhappy tourists. Balis tourism industry is, in many ways the shop window of Indonesia and the Government do care about that. They have once again targeted double digit growth for tourist arrivals in 2015. Which brings me back to the original point of this article which was motivated by a poster below complaining - and not in a bad way - that the Balinese dont seem keen on cleaning the beach. The fact is, Im not either. The longer we keep the beaches clean, the longer the Government will feel its not a priority problem. So, and this is just my personal opinion, every time we clean the beach, we put off a permanent sustainable solution for one more day...
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 08:37:34 +0000
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