I don’t even know what to say to this. The Maldives were once on my bucket list, but no more. This is sickening.. and how could it possibly be cleaned up. Reports from 2018 say this trash island is on fire. Over 1 million tourists visit every year. Each of these tourists produce 3.5kg’s of garbage daily. There are NO recycling facilities in The Maldives, which means all those toxic and hazardous waste are put on this island
Trash Island is 75 metres (250 foot) and growing. This is from Wikipedia:
?Thilafushi originally was a lagoon called “Thilafalhu” with a length of 7 km and a width of 200 metres at the shallowest regions. It came into existence following a series of discussions and efforts to resolve Malé‘s garbage predicament during the early 1990s. The decision to reclaim Thilafalhu as a landfill was made on December 5, 1991.[citation needed]
Thilafushi received its first load of garbage from Malé on January 7, 1992. Operations started with just 1 landing craft, 4 heavyload trucks, 2 excavators and a single wheel loader.[citation needed]
During its early years of waste disposal operations, pits (also known as cells) with a volume of 37,500 ft3 (1060 m3) were dug, after which the sand obtained from the excavation was used to construct walled enclosures around the internal perimeter of the cells. Waste received from Malé was deposited into the midst of the pit, which was topped off with a layer of construction debris and then uniformly levelled with white sand. Initially there was no segregation of the waste since it had to be disposed immediately due to mass accumulation…..
Environmentalists say that more than 330 tonnes of rubbish is brought to Thilafushi a day, most of which comes from Malé. In 2005 it was estimated that 31,000 truckloads of garbage are transported to Thilafushi annually, where it is dumped in large piles and eventually used to reclaim land and increase the size of the island.[5] So much is being deposited that the island is growing at a square metre a day.[6]