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COVID-19 compounds Indonesia’s marine waste problem
The onset of COVID-19 has inadvertently produced more waste that ends up in Indonesia's marine ecosystem, communities and academia have found.
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A tourist stands among plastic trash at Kuta Beach near Denpasar, Bali, on Dec. 19, 2017. Millions of tourists are drawn to Bali's palm-fringed scenery and rich marine life, but a British diver has released stark footage highlighting a growing problem in its famously crystal-clear waters: plastic trash. (AFP/Sonny Tumbelaka)
F
or Swietenia Puspa Lestari of Divers Clean Action, a local community-based program in Bali, plastic pollution in the ocean has become worrying, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since the virus hit the country last March, her community has increasingly found surgical masks, latex gloves and other medical waste ending up in rivers, beaches and in the ocean, endangering marine ecosystems.
"It's very concerning because our group and other volunteers cannot go out to clean beaches as often as we used to, or carry out large scale clean-up efforts amid the pandemic," she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
The problem was exacerbated by significant growth in online shopping and food deliveries, as more and more people avoided going outside for fear of contracting COVID-19, which in turn led to the increased use of single-use plastic packaging.
With her community, Swietenia has recovered around 3.1 tons of waste – around a third of which was single-use plastics – in a clean-up effort at 16 beaches in Bali and West Nusa Tenggara last year.
A similar experience on the beaches of Makassar, South Sulawesi is playing out. Sahril Akbar, who, along with his fellow community volunteers at Baruna Ocean, has found a significant amount of plastic waste during the group’s weekly clean-up activities on four of Makassar’s beaches.
"We have found more waste on the beaches since the pandemic started, with surgical masks becoming the second-most common item retrieved after cigarette butts," Sahril told the Post this week, adding that he had also found a number of surgical gloves, used syringes and medical fluid bags as they combed through the sand.
