As I walked towards one of the most famous beaches of Bali, I could not believe what I was looking at. As far as the eye could be seen, there was plastic. Covering the beach, plastic, ankle waves and waves.
I went ahead, camera in hand. My footsteps made a crunching noise in the form of plastic under my feet. Bottles, cups, bags, toothbrushes, bottle cap…. The beach was now a dumping site for every type of plastic that you could imagine.
In January 2025, Bali beaches were affected by waves of plastic pollution. The rainy season flows to the polluted rivers of Indonesia, which accumulates millions of tons of plastic waste in the oceans, which wash on the beaches of the country, due to sea streams.
In recent years, the waves of pollution have intensified, but 2025 has been called the “worst year” by the local people. I saw some posts by local NGOs on Instagram what was happening. When I saw the seriousness of pollution through those social media posts, I knew that this is a story that I had to cover. I booked a flight and hotel next to one of the polluted beaches, and I was there within 48 hours. The reality was that I proved worse than what I saw on social media.
The United Nations Environment Program stated, “With a population of 250 million, Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world after China and the second largest plastic pollutant. The country produces 3.2 million tonnes of universal plastic waste in a year, of about 1.29 million tonnes in the sea.”
When I came, I could not believe what I was watching. The entire beaches were covered in plastic piles. As I saw in the sea, plastic waves were being washed again, again and again on the edge.
I turned on my camera (Canon R5 EF 24-70 mm F/2.8LI USM) and started taking pictures of what I was looking. I put a gopro on the top of my camera, as I wanted to show people the circumstances from a photographic and video perspective. By increasing the action camera on my main camera, I wanted it to add the feeling of immersion to the story, taking the viewer with me and I made pictures.
This was not the first time I saw extreme environmental destruction. I have spent 20 years to document some of the world’s most serious environmental problems. By taking a picture of sandstorm in China Forest harvesting in Cambodia, sea level in South Pacific is increasing, and drought in India.
This was some of the worst pollution that I have ever seen. It was a plastic sheer scale that surprised me. As soon as I walked along the beaches, the plastic lay down everywhere. It was an endless expansion.
I started documenting destruction. I tipped through plastic. The dead fish lay down everywhere. I started taking pictures of him in this strange diastopian scene. Tourists posed for selfie between plastic, to ensure that they still occupy the delightful sunset behind them, take out the plastic in the frame. I got out in shallow as dirty brown waves of water filled with plastic on my shoes.
I met the local NGO whose social media post alerted me to what was happening in Bali. They were organizing a large-scale clean activity, bringing locals, volunteers and NGO workers together to try to clean the plastic lying on the beaches. It was a great and brave effort, but as each piece of plastic was raised, the waves brought one hundred other people to the shore.
I wanted to take a picture of those who were involved in the clean-up, so that the positive efforts being made to deal with this crisis could be shown. With the help of my assistant and a small off-camera flash (Canon Speedlight 430EX-III RT), I contacted volunteers and made pictures among them while picking up the plastic. It was an inconsistent scene, as people had raised in a fist of plastic that should have been an ancient beach scene.
I woke up in water to try to catch volunteers and the extreme situations in which they were working. As soon as the waves defeated both of me and them, I had to be strictly saved from my camera being caught by the next coming wave.
As a photo journalist, I knew that I needed to live there, however, to catch images that keep the audience there with me and the volunteers. I wanted the audience to feel the waves through the picture, taste the salt on the lens, to listen to plastic waste under our feet.
As I further discovered the beaches, I came to know that it was not just fish that was falling victim to plastic; There were also very large animals, such as sea turtles. I discovered one in shallow, line Bali’s beaches just a few meters from the busy restaurant. This sedentary, closing the eyes, almost as it was sleeping between the pile of plastic waste.
According to the World Wildlife Fund, “Research suggests that 52% of the world’s turtles have eaten plastic waste. The reason is simple: A floating plastic bag can look like a lot of jelly, algae, or other species, which make a large component of the diet of sea turtles … can easily kill them.
Tourists queued nearby to take pictures of sunset, appearing to ignore plastic waste around them and the dead sea turtle.
This diastopian scene says a lot about the current collective attitude to our shared global environmental problems. We know that they are happening, but we like to ignore them and pretend that they are not there.
This is where photography comes. A well -designed frames can highlight these incompatibility, injustice and tragedies. This is the task of a photographer to use its skills in lighting, composition and balanced the moments so that the audience can be shocked as the audience as the story and the issue behind the image.
What I saw in Bali was really shocking. I hope images can serve as evidence for the severity of the current global plastic crisis. This can occur in Indonesia, but the production, use and recycling of plastic is a global issue, about which we all should know, should pay attention, and find solutions to prevent this type of environmental disaster in the future.
About the author: Scene Galagher A professional photo journalist and documentary is a filmmaker whose work focuses on climate crisis and global environmental issues. His work regularly appears with the National Geographic, The Guardian and Pulitzer Center. Originally from the UK, he is located in China for more than 20 years, which covers issues in the Asia-Pacific region. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. For more than sean, you can Follow it on youtube And Go to her website,
