Our good friend Josh Berman, who hauled himself with his wife out to glorious Boulder, Colorado, is still keeping busy traveling and writing his blog, Stonegrooves. It’s been a while since we checked in with the prolific travel book writer, so I figured we’d do so and post about this video of a cruise ship dumping it’s trash onto a Belizean barge.
I’m not sure what the legality is of this act, but Josh suggests it’s illegal. Whatever the case, it does point out one of the big issues facing the rise in tourism around the globe: solid waste disposal.
This is actually an issue just about ever where, but for cruise ships and such it is an even bigger problem. There are actually entire organizations whose stated purpose is to control this issue. I remember taking a boat up the Amazon years ago, and I watched in horror as one of the boat’s workers literally swept a week’s worth of trash into the Amazon River. Everything went: bottles, condoms, batteries, food trash. It was disgusting.
So that might not be the most lovely note upon which to pay a visit to Josh’s blog, but what can you do.