So much trash has been washing up on the beach, that Bali’s Badung regency in the island’s southwest coast has declared an “emergency status” in select spots of the coastline to handle clearing the literal tons of rubbish dotting the shores.
Since rainy season has been creeping in these past couple of weeks in Bali, rubbish, predominately logs and plastic trash, have been coming up on the beach. As the rain pours down, all the trash dumped in streams and rivers finds its way to the ocean and piles up on the beach.
Badung’s Environment and Hygiene Agency (LHK) declared the “emergency status” on Tuesday, as the daily volume of rubbish multiplied by a factor of 10.
“It had just been five tons a day, but now it’s significantly gone up, up to 50 tons,” Badung LHK director, I Putu Eka Merthawan told NusaBali on Tuesday.
Merthawan admitted that the “waste invasion”, although an annual occurrence, came sooner than expected this year—last year didn’t quite strike until December.
To try and manage the massive amounts of rubbish, LHK will be prioritizing popular tourist beaches Kuta and Legian, where it will send cleanup crews.
“The plan is to deploy 700 janitors to the beach to clean up,” Merthawan said.
The “alert level” has not yet been raised to full-on emergency for other beaches on the Badung coastline like Pererenen, Canggu, Seseh, Berawa, Petitenget, and Jimbaran. These remain on standby, says Merthawan–though available personnel are still apparently (and thankfully) being sent in to help cleanup.
A post shared by Info Badung on Wednesday morning shows Kedonganan Beach getting tidied up:
The LHK director says his agency is working on socializing the garbage phenomenon, that it’s something that happens every year so people should not be alarmed—though we’d get it if they are not psyched about the news.
“People need not worry, same with tourists. We have prepared our course of action according to standard operational procedures,” he said.
A reminder of how bad things looked last year, just in case you forgot, or haven’t yet experience “trash season” in Bali.
Tourists walk amongst trash washed up on Kuta beach by seasonal winds, as workers attempt a clean-up in background pic.twitter.com/MOG7h7h2v0
— Hans Solo (@thandojo) February 17, 2016
