{"id":4028,"date":"2018-12-03T04:30:36","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T04:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icleiseas.org\/?p=4028"},"modified":"2018-12-03T04:30:36","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T04:30:36","slug":"indonesian-island-cleanup-nets-40-tonnes-of-rubbish-daily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/2018\/12\/03\/indonesian-island-cleanup-nets-40-tonnes-of-rubbish-daily\/","title":{"rendered":"Indonesian island cleanup nets 40 tonnes of rubbish daily"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared on The Straits Times.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

JAKARTA (AFP) – Residents on a string of coral-fringed islands off Jakarta’s coast are battling a tidal wave of trash, with more than 40 tonnes of rubbish collected daily over the past week, an official said.<\/p>\n

Indonesian authorities have deployed an army of staff and a fleet of boats to help clear rubbish-infested shorelines and surrounding waters, underscoring the South-east Asian archipelago’s mammoth marine waste problem.<\/p>\n

It is the world’s second-biggest contributor to marine debris after China, producing about 1.29 million tonnes annually.<\/p>\n

This week’s cleanup operation is centered on an area known as the Thousand Islands, a popular day trip from the traffic-clogged capital.<\/p>\n

Residents of one island have reported dead turtles in the area, although Mr. Yusen Hardiman, head of the region’s environment department, said it was not yet clear if it was a result of ingesting rubbish.<\/p>\n

A sperm whale was found dead last week in a marine park off Sulawesi island with 115 plastic cups and 25 plastic bags in its stomach.<\/p>\n

Indonesia’s marine waste problem has become so bad that officials last year declared a “garbage emergency” after a stretch of coast in Bali was swamped with rubbish.<\/p>\n

Some 264 sanitation officers are involved in the ongoing cleanup of the Thousand Islands, while 13 boats regularly patrol trash-choked areas of the archipelago, with another 10 set to be added to the fleet next year.<\/p>\n

Most of the rubbish clogging the chain of islands is from elsewhere, flushed into the ocean by bulging rivers or swirling currents during the monsoon season, Mr. Hardiman said in a statement late on Thursday (Nov 29).<\/p>\n

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, has pledged to reduce marine plastic waste by 70 percent by 2025.<\/p>\n

But poor waste-processing infrastructure and low awareness among its 260 million inhabitants prove major obstacles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article first appeared on The Straits Times. JAKARTA (AFP) – Residents on a string of coral-fringed islands off Jakarta’s coast are battling a tidal wave of trash, with more than 40 tonnes of rubbish collected daily over the past week, an official said. Indonesian authorities have deployed an army of staff and a fleet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":4030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,105,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-news","category-icleiindonesia","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4028"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4031,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions\/4031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icleiseas.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}