Micronesian Islands Foundering Under Mountains Of Trash - Guardian

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"Once famed for their white-sand beaches, the islands of the Pacific are threatened by a waste mountain. Rubbish now clogs streams flowing into the harbour in Samoa's capital Apia, and floats through the mangrove forests of Fiji. Every part of the region is affected. And one of the biggest battles in many island societies, say experts, is raising awareness of the problem.

Traditional waste disposal in the Pacific consisted of throwing food scraps to your pigs, but swelling populations and the import of foreign goods have changed the makeup of domestic rubbish. "The waste of yesterday was mostly natural," says Asterio Takesey, director of the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme. "Now that many islands have entered the modern economy their consumption pattern has changed." The problems are worst in the low-lying atoll countries of Micronesia.

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South Tarawa's households generate up to 6,500 tonnes of solid waste every year and its three landfill sites are ill equipped to cope. A report in 2000 found that only one of the dump sites was protected by a sea wall, meaning that rubbish from the others gets swept out to sea and along Tarawa's beaches when high tides inundate the land.

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But Kiribati's problems are insignificant compared with compared to those of neighbouring Tuvalu, a country whose total land area is less than a third of that of Tarawa. One recent report estimated that the 4,000 people living on the 2.4sq km capital islet of Fongafale generate around 20,000 cubic metres of waste per year. The island's only licensed landfill has a capacity of 3,200 cubic metres, so large pits left over from the construction of its second world war airfield are increasingly used as unofficial dumping grounds. When 'king tides' inundate the entire island, as they did in February this year, the retreating waters leave behind a detritus of washed-up debris."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1351162,00.html