(CNN) — Tons of trash have washed onto Bali’s famous Kuta Beach, prompting locals to spend the first day of the new year staging a cleanup.
“Some 70% of the marine debris is plastic waste,” Colonel Made Mahaparta from the Udayana Regional Military Command told Antara.
The trash was reportedly loaded onto trucks and transported to a landfill site.
Plastic trash and other marine debris washes onto Kuta Beach every year during the monsoon season, said Badung’s head of the Environment Office, Wayan Puja, Antara reported. The official blamed the problem on garbage mismanagement.
Workers clean up piles of debris and plastic waste brought in by strong waves at Kuta Beach in Bali, Indonesia, on January 1, 2021.
Made Nagi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Though Kuta Beach faces the issue annually, unlike past years, far fewer travelers are around to see it at the moment. Like many popular destinations, Bali has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and remains closed to international tourists.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is the most devastating disaster for Bali tourism,” he said. “It is much worse than the Bali bombings, both the first and the second, and worse than all the Mount Agung eruptions combined.”
