PHOTO GALLERY: The world’s dirtiest eventsAll public events tend to make a bit of a mess, but some are worse than others. Newsweek looks at some of the biggest garbage-generating events on the planet, including NASCAR, Glastonbury and the Olympics.
Waste management
Life and death in the Pacific Garbage Patch
Plastic cigarette lighters, bottle tops, fishing lures, parts of shoes, plastic bags: just about anything we get rid of ends up in the guts of baby albatrosses in the mid-Pacific, says Bob Gosford — and he has the pictures to prove it. Hold on to your lunch.
VIDEO: The great pacific garbage patch
Deep in the North Pacific Ocean, there is a garbage patch twice the size of Texas, with 36-to-1 ratio of plastic to plankton. Mother Jones sets sail with the scientists studying the mess.
REVEALED: Big Oil’s big Africa cover-up
The Guardian exposes a massive cover-up by British oil company Trafigura, with secret emails revealing the company dumped highly toxic waste in Ivory Coast, despite knowing the dangers.
Italian Mafia take out the trash. Literally.
Informants say the Calabrian Mafia have set up a lucrative radioactive waste disposal business — for a tidy fee, they will take a ship full of your toxic waste out to sea and blow it up.
World becomes bin for China’s rubbish
China, the world’s largest producer of household waste, relies on waste incinerators to control its rubbish. But their emissions are sending toxic pollutants out across the globe.
Up to their ankles in sewage, a remote community’s patience runs out
The NT community of Ampilatwatja is overrun with raw sewage, and with complete inaction from the government, the residents have finally cracked.
Athens breathes easy with garbage collection
The notoriously smoggy city of Athens is attempting to clean its act up, with new garbage collection trucks run on compressed natural gas. Ancient Greek god of air, Khaos, would be proud.
Britain’s dirty little secret
The UK has been accused of dumping toxic household and industrial waste into developing countries, with syringes, condoms, nappies, bags of blood and electrical items found in waste that was supposed to be recyclable.
The history of plastic
As the most visible evidence of a disposable, trash-addled society, plastic has become the emblem of a world swimming in waste.
