Sri Vijaya Puram: There was outrage among social media users after a post showing garbage from countries like Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia, washed up on the pristine beaches of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, went viral.
Content creator Vishnu witnessed this crisis firsthand while travelling through the islands, as reported by NDTV.
Vishnu, alongside his fellow travellers, stumbled upon garbage on the Little Andaman Island. Upon close examination, Vishnu discovered that the majority of the trash on the beach came from Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia.
“We are at this beautiful beach at Little Andaman, and this beach is littered with plastic, and I wanted to explore where all this plastic was coming from. So, we started collecting some trash, and we realised a lot of it is coming from Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar,” said Vishnu, who rifled through the garbage and checked the country of manufacturing of bottles and other trash items.
The garbage was coming from countries that claimed to be cleaner than India but were disposing of their l
itter in the sea indiscriminately, Vishnu pointed out.
“A lot of this is not from India. Lot of this is coming from nearby regions. So all of this you see is coming from countries that claim they are cleaner than India,” he said.
“We also contribute to this, it’s not like we don’t, but we should not be blamed 100 per cent for all this,” he added.
The video had garnered over 87,000 views and hundreds of comments as social media users expressed disappointment at the state of the beach.
“Pathetic to see how we humans trash every pristine place of nature,” a user posted.
“I have never ever seen that much garbage getting collected over the beach. Sad how it’s not been managed and thrown away in the sea,” another wrote.
“The problem is many will now say, ‘See it’s not our fault’ and proceed to go outside and litter again. We need to work on responsibility and accountability in order to change the general mindset of people,” a third commented.
Another user said: “People from other countries, even Asian ones, are quick to blame and point fingers at India, calling us dirty while they dispose of their garbage in a way that it travels all the way to our islands in India.”
Thousands of tonnes of garbage, including plastic waste pollute the seas and oceans, causing irreparable damage to the environment. The incident proves that garbage dumped at one location, does not remain contained there, but travels thousands of km to pollute fragile ecosystems elsewhere.