Some 70 percent of the marine debris is plastic wasteBadung, Bali (ANTARA) - Residents of Badung, Bali, began the first day of 2021 on Friday by conducting a coastal clean-up drive in the Kuta Beach area that resulted in 30 tons marine debris cleared from this famous beach.
The marine litter was then loaded onto trucks by using three backhoes to be transported to a landfill site.
"Some 70 percent of the marine debris is plastic waste," Colonel Made Mahaparta from the Udayana Regional Military Command stated.
The clean-up mission was conducted by local government officials, who collaborated with boy scouts, police officers, and soldiers.
Head of the Environment Office at the Badung District Government I Wayan Puja pointed to the yearly problem of a mountain of trash lying adrift at sea that then washed ashore on Kuta Beach.
However, the volume of marine litter washing ashore has slightly reduced. The trash lying strewn around comprised driftwood and drift bamboo, though chiefly constituting plastic waste, he remarked.
"It means the garbage comes from the residential waste that fails to be handled properly," he remarked, adding that during the rainy season, the domestic waste washes into the rivers before reaching the sea.
The marine debris, which often washes ashore on Kuta Beach, is found spreading along the 15-km-long coastal line, he pointed out.
ANTARA noted that the marine litter, chiefly comprising plastic waste, has become a serious problem for the resort island of Bali's beaches and sea.
In February 2016, Kuta Beach, for instance, came under the glare of the local and global media for the varied trash washed up ashore this popular beach.
The image of unclean Kuta Beach was published by several print and electronic media, including "theconversation.com," which used the photo for an article written by Thomas Wright, a PhD student of Australia's University of Queensland, dated 5/9/2017.
Wright pointed out that Indonesia was recorded as one of the world's main contributors to marine plastic pollution due to its polluted rivers and streams that distributed some 200 thousand tons of plastic to the ocean annually.
Two years after vast quantities of plastic waste washed up ashore Kuta Beach, the same issue again caught the global media's attention. In March 2018, The Guardian's news portal published a story on the diving experience of Rich Horner in Bali Island.
The British diver spotted vast quantities of trash floating in the sea of Bali and then filmed it. His video was then broadcast on his social media account and YouTube.
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Translator: Ayu KP, Rahmad Nasution
Editor: Fardah Assegaf
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