Plastic waste in the Maldives gets a second life: a luxury holiday resort turns beach clean-up trash into useful treasure
- The Fairmont Maldives Sirru Fen Fushi, a luxury holiday resort in the Maldives, organises beach clean-ups to tackle the problem of plastic waste
- Not only that, it is teaching local children about the problem and showing them how it can be turned into useful things for school, home and tourists
I am filling a bag with rubbish plucked from the sand of a tiny Maldivian island. Into the sack goes a tattered plastic slipper emblazoned with the name JW Marriott and Spa, a reminder that the places that bear the brunt of plastic pollution are not necessarily the ones that create it.
Milandhoo, in the remote Shaviyani Atoll, has a small population, a handful of mosques and a tiny harbour filled with bobbing fishing boats.
Neus Segura, the resort’s marine biologist, is visiting Milandhoo’s only school to lead a beach clean-up. In a classroom metres from the beach, she tells students there are seven types of plastic, and makes clear which ones pose the biggest problems.
We head to the beach and the children scatter across the sand, filling several one-tonne sacks with bottles, fragments of fishing nets and discarded flip-flops.
