How Easter Island is swamped by deluge of plastic

F rom a distance, the colourful beach at Ovahe seems a postcard-perfect mosaic of natural beauty. Craggy volcanic boulders, pockmarked from bubbling lava, jut from the sand, garnished by a necklace of pastel-coloured corals and seashells pounded to pieces by the wild, crashing surf.
As the waves pull back, however, another reality emerges. The sand holds few corals or shells. Instead, the high-tide mark is a carpet of plastics polished into an array of bleached Coca-Cola reds and Pepsi blues.
"Look at all this," says Kina Paoa Kannegiesser, 22, using a kitchen sieve to scoop up bottle caps, shampoo bottle shards and disposable razors. The ocean rubbish is crammed into every nook and cranny along this remote beach on Easter Island, a 163 sq km speck of land.
About 3,700km west of central Chile, Easter Island (also known as Rapa Nui) is among the most remote spots on Earth- and among the most polluted. It is estimated that 50 times more plastic washes ashore on these beaches than on the Chilean mainland, largely a result of the vast spiralling current known as the South Pacific gyre. This current acts like a funnel, sucking in plastic from as far away as the Galápagos Islands and New Zealand and, with every tide, depositing a wave of floating rubbish.
Picking through the sand, Paoa Kannegiesser holds an example of a coral colony forming on the lattice of a plastic fish bin discarded by the industrial fishing fleets that almost encircle this island as they chase dwindling schools of tuna. She collects fish bins by the dozen and lately has been finding coral that has fused with the debris to form an organic-plastic sandwich.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 28, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 9.500 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der June 28, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 9.500 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Alison's world The graphic novelist faces up to midlife in this playfully fictionalised memoir
Alison Bechdel emerged in the 1980s with Dykes to Watch Out For, a groundbreaking weekly strip that featured a group of mostly lesbian friends. Since then, her acclaimed graphic novels have focused mainly on herself and her family.
I need to drop everything and get on with doing nothing, quickly
I am sitting in my office shed, marvelling that an email from a car hire company I last used six years ago feels entitled to employ the subject line DROP EVERYTHING.

Fire starter Springsteen's anti-Trump broadside divides fans
As the lead singer of a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Brad Hobicorn had been looking forward to performing at Riv's Toms River Hub in New Jersey last Friday.
A new Syria: sanctions relief gives the shattered country a chance to rebuild
The startled joy that greeted Bashar al-Assad's fall six months ago was shadowed by the fear of what might follow.
I wanted us to finish our journey on a high'
Saint Etienne are calling it a day after 35 years. They discuss their final album, turning down Cher's Believe and a career defined by friendship and invention

The museum of absolutely everything
Poison darts, a dome from Spain, priceless spoons and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture... our architecture critic is wowed by the V&A's new east London outpost for 250,000 of its mind-boggling artefacts

Over a barrel Shortage of sugar shakes Cuba's rum industry
It is a crisis that would have sent a shiver down Ernest Hemingway’s drinking arm. Cuba’s communist government is struggling to process enough sugar to make the rum for his beloved mojitos and daiquiris.

Whiz up or wing it? Dips worth doing yourself and the ones to buy
Is it always better to make your own dips, or can I just buy them?

How a tiny village was engulfed by a mountain
It took a couple of minutes for 9m tonnes of rock to obliterate Blatten-but as glaciers melt, such disasters are more likely

This is the modern world
A new exhibition celebrates 50 women who bucked tradition by trading parochial Australia for European modernity to create 'subtly subversive' art