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Authorities say 30 to 60 tonnes of trash is collected every day from Bali’s most popular beaches.
Trash regularly invades Bali’s beaches at this time of year when monsoon season begins, but authorities say it is worse than in previous years.
More and more plastic ends up on the beaches, and despite efforts to clean it up, the image of Bali is being clouded with photographs showing litter strewn across beaches.
Wayan Puja of the Badung environment and sanitation agency, which covers the beaches of Kuta, Seminyak and Jimbaran, says the garbage keeps coming.
“We have been working very hard to clean the beaches, yet the garbage keeps coming in,” Wayan told AAP.
“Every day we deploy our personnel, trucks and loaders.”
He said that more than 30 tons of garbage were removed on Friday from the beaches of Kuta, Legian and Seminyak and that the amount doubled to 60 tons on Saturday.
Wayan said that while litter flooding on Bali’s beaches was a regular phenomenon at this time of year, due to weather conditions, it was getting worse.
Dr. Gede Hendrawan, director of the Center for Remote Sensing and Ocean Sciences at Bali Udayana University, said the biggest problem was Indonesia’s ineffective garbage management systems.
“The biggest problem is that actually garbage management has not been effective in Indonesia. Bali has just started reorganizing it, also Java has just started,” he told AAP.
Bali Governor Wayan Koster urged serious measures to clean up the beaches, which are a major tourist attraction.
“The Badung administration should have a garbage management system at Kuta Beach that is complete with adequate equipment and human resources so that they can work quickly to clean up the garbage that reaches the beach,” said the governor.
“Also, in the rainy season when tourists are visiting, the garbage management systems must be running 24 hours a day. Don’t wait until tomorrow.”
Thousands of Australian tourists would normally be in Bali on vacation during the summer, but the coronavirus pandemic has stopped travel abroad and there are few visitors.
Indonesia also closed its borders to all foreign arrivals from January 1-14 in a bid to stop the spread of new strains of Covid-19.
Bali’s economy has been hit hard by the pandemic that has decimated its tourism industry and now only domestic arrivals are declining.
Brothers Rizkika Arshanty and Rizkella Triara, from Jakarta, told AAP that they were disappointed to visit Kuta Beach and find it awash in trash.
