An annual source of conversation and frustration is the garbage that washes up on the beaches in the wet season. I walk on the beach in Seminyak some mornings and with every tide, there is a line of seaweed and mad made garbage. Everyone has their own idea where it comes from. A lady who wrote to the Jakarta Post recently complained it was western tourists. Ask a Balinese and they’ll say it floats over from Java. Ask an expat and they’ll probably tell you it washes down the rivers.
In the wet season there are changes in the winds / currents etc. but I reckon most of thre junk is home produced. A couple of experinces showed me this, including one time when I was in the highlands chatting to a local. His wife came out of their shop, opened a plastic packet and threw the waste plastic down and drainage canal.
Years ago in Bali this was how people lived, eating off of a banana leaf and tossing the things away to arrive in the ocean sometime later. When people don’t go to the beach they don’t care that the garbage ends up there.
Another time I was riding by a drained rice field, which was covered in plastic packets. Its a problem, and one that is likely to get worse, just like many other places (Fiji etc.). In Seminyak the better hotels hire a squad of people to rake the beach every morning. Moving dirt from one place to another seems to be a career for a lot of people over here.
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G’day Nick,
All ya gotta do is take a walk throught the Mangrove Rehab Centre to see the crap that floats around the waters and is pumped out of drains.
http://www.planetmole.org
A couple of years ago I was talking to a Balinese guy who owns a really nice little shop outside a village in East Bali. His shop has a panoramic view of the ocean. The view is spoilt only by the assorted rubbish on the edge of the quiet road going past. I commented on it and he said that the government wouldn’t do anything about it. I said but the government isn’t putting the rubbish there, it’s mainly the people who live around here. I also said that if I owned the shop, I would clean up the roadside in front of it. He just looked bemused as if he couldn’t understand what I was getting at.
He was clean and smart and so were his wife and children. And so was his shop.
Bali has a big problem with garbage in my opinion. Its oversized population, concentrated in a short area, with little or none concern for environmental issues, and a river network that is seen as the perfect garbage disposer.
If you take a ride of the beaten track you’ll soon find some river full of plastic bags and all sort of things. When it rains it flows better to shore.
I predict a tough battle to make a change in peoples minds… if there is ever the will from ho is in charge.
Garbage everywhere in Indonesia.. I would say, education and more education to the locals. Though I still saw some westerners tossed trash as well.
In my hometown, Surabaya - East Java, once we had a mayor who was really concerned and took action about trash! He fined many residents and businesses of not following the guidelines, as well as he built a trash system, trash & recycle. Including trucks and pick up schedules throughout the city. He hired many ‘clean up’ worker who worked at dawn, keep the city clean. It used to be flooded in every rainy day. It changed, the city was clean. My friends and I were teamed up in promoting clean creeks and rivers. It worked, until he was not a mayor - he died.
The next mmayor was just another corruptor. Go figure.. Shame on him.
As Nick said, if those people don’t go to the beach, they wouldn’t understand the reason why they can’t trash their paradise island.
I think if Balinese wan’t to do something about trash, I believe they could make a huge change. But, they need a pioneer to start with. Someone who Balineses will listen to and work together. I believe it could happen.
Salam!
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