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Plastic or Planet? National Geographic magazine 3/2018 185 images Created 1 Apr 2021

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  • An underwater photo captures a piece of red plastic floating in Manila Bay. Over 500,000 tons of plastic trash wash out through this bay every year, contributing  to the 10 million metric tons of plastic seeps into the oceans annually, mostly from Asia.  The bay is one of the most polluted bodies of water in the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703541.JPG
  • A mother a child work together sorting plastic in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where most of the informal plastic waste industry work occurs along the Buriganga River.  Noorjahan teaches her child Momo how to bail plastic waste after it has been washed in the river that flows into the Bay of Bengal.  Her  job is to take the wet plastic sheeting and spread it out to dry over the landscape. It hand labor–shaking water off each piece of plastic and turning it over until it is dry enough to be baled and taken to a transfer recycling station.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692107.JPG
  • Workers at a balloon factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, dip boards with sticks into a mix of colorful polymers leaving them in the sun.  As they begin to dry, they are rolled up and the material forms the end of a blow-up balloon.   These are “home-made” and  artisanal, but still “single-use-plastic.”
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702808.JPG
  • Plastic bottles move down the conveyer belt at Poland Spring where between 345 and 425 employees working at the Hollis, Maine site oversee an array of computers and the water bottle production line. The 838,000 square-foot facility is the largest bottled water plant in the world, turning out about 80 million cases of water every year. Some of the machines fill 1,200 bottles per minute. The plant has reduced the plastic in its half-liter bottles by 62 percent since 1994.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692111.JPG
  • Plastic that is sorted in the Dharavi Slums goes to China comes back as colorful artificial flowers in a market outside of Mumbai. This woman is shopping in the Dharavi slum through the rich array of colors for flowers for her wedding.<br />
<br />
The slum was founded in 1882 during the British colonial era, and grew in part because of an expulsion of factories and residents from the peninsular city centre by the colonial government, and from the migration of poor rural Indians into urban Mumbai. For this reason, Dharavi is currently a highly multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and diverse settlement. Dharavi has an active informal economy in which numerous household enterprises employ many of the slum residents leather, textiles and pottery products are among the goods made inside Dharavi. The total annual turnover has been estimated at over US$1 billion.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702735.JPG
  • A family removes labels from plastic bottles, sorting green from clear ones to sell to a scrap dealer. A woman works sorting while her daughter wades through a sea of plastic under the Buriganga Bridge in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They are part of informal plastic waste industry and set up their operation working long hours to eke out of living looking for recyclable materials.  It may appear a chaotic, tangled heap but the workers make order finding like colors and types in the waste that is in the shadows of Burigonga Bridge Road that goes over a backwater to the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692108.JPG
  • Informal plastic waste worker makes his rounds in very early morning in Varanasi, India because the city temperatures rise in unbearable heat during the day. This is the Beniyapark neighborhood. Varanasi has government trash workers but not nearly enough for the 1.2 million population and all the tourists. So people put their trash on the street and wait for informal trash workers/recyclers or some government worker to come by and clean up the street. It’s not a great system. Pappu is part of the informal trash picker system and he collects plastic waste to recycle.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-4.JPG
  • Trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump. One plastic worker walks from her tent and begins her morning by finding a discarded piece of red material to add to her outfit. A dog watches her and birds fly over this city of garbage which is the Kalyan Dumping Ground in Thane district outside Mumbai. Most all the trash pickers were gathering plastic, a precious find for recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696237.JPG
  • Plastic bottles fill the Cibeles fountain as a way of calling attention to the environmental impact of disposable plastics. Luzinterruptus is an anonymous art collective in Madrid that’s been making installation art with plastic waste all over the world. They started producing political and illegal art works and now, ironically, this installation is legit and paid for by City Hall in Madrid. They took the plastic trash from a town and placed it in the most beautiful areas of the city, the fountains of Neptune and Cibeles in Centro so everyone would contemplate on what they are doing with one-use-plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692105.JPG
  • Plastic waste in the Ganges River at Varanasi, India adds to sewage, animal and industrial waste and pesticides making it one of the planet’s most polluted rivers. Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-1.JPG
  • Trash pickers bring their plastic to Alexander Ocag Junkshop where Baseco Happy Land and Aroma earning 15 pesos a kilo for sorted clean plastic. Twenty-five percent of the waste of the Philippines is produced in Metro Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702635.JPG
  • Estero de Binondo stream in the Chinatown area of Manila is covered with itinerant homes. You can no longer see the stream in most areas because it is choked with plastic waste. The stream is actually on the left side of this photos.  These residents will be moved to Bulcan, a settlement in the north. Even though the Pasig was cleaned up with major effort, plastic still flows from these areas into that river which makes Philippines one of the top three countries that pollute the oceans with plastics.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702626.JPG
  • Estero de Binondo stream in the Chinatown area of Manila is covered with itinerant homes to the degree that the stream is no longer visible. It is choked with plastic waste. Hardly believable, the stream in this photo is on the left side of the frame. Itinerant residents will be relocated to Bulacan, a settlement in the north. Although the Pasig was cleaned up with major effort, plastic still flows from here into the river making the Philippines one of the top three countries the world a contributor to polluting the oceans with plastics.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702675.JPG
  • Children catch tiny fish in a stream that comes from Manila Bay, goes through a fish hatchery, and comes out a slightly cleaner before it flows back into the bay. This is one of the few places I could take underwater photographs because the hatchery filters the water. A lingering memory from this trip will be that all our garbage goes SOMEWHERE and in the Philippines it goes to the most marginalized areas to sort, de-label and pile up creating a hazard.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2693944.JPG
  • Ten Hectare beach at the north tip of Baseco slum area is covered with trash including used toothpaste tubes from the Pasig River and other sources. Trash is visible on all edges of Manila Bay but this area is particularly impacted. A stream that comes out of a fish hatchery is filtered, but then it flows back out into Manila Bay. The bay has very little visibility–somewhat the consistency of motor oil.  A lingering memory from this trip will be that all our garbage goes SOMEWHERE and in the Philippines it goes to the most marginalized areas to be sorted, de-labelled and piled up. In this culture plastic is money, and artisanal industries are located around the dumps and tourist areas where plastic trash comes out of casinos and hotels. Children push aside used toilet paper to find bits of plastic that net 5 pesos a kilo. Junk shops take it to plastic processors for around 22 pesos a kilo. It takes about 16 one liter Coke bottles to weigh one kilogram. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702700.JPG
  • The Baseco Slums in Manila is known as the Recycling and Plastic Waste Industry hub of the Philippines. Trucks loaded with plastic trucks on the right side of the frame are caught up in congestion in Manila traffic which ranks as some of the worst in the world.  Infrastructure problems, high population and accidents are some of the causes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702702.JPG
  • Ekaterina  goes to Medeteks Medical Center and has plastic wrap applied as weight loss therapy in Kamchatka, Russia. This treatment is popular after giving birth.<br />
Ekaterina’s family history is commercial fishing.  After the electric stimulation treatment she is rubbed down with a product and wrapped in plastic.  <br />
<br />
Businesses like this are coming back. During default Petropavlovsk (PK) hemorrhaged people... they all left for better jobs or other more profitable places.  PK is stable now mainly because there is a resource here... salmon.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-21.TIF
  • Ekaterina  goes to Medeteks Medical Center and has plastic wrap applied as weight loss therapy in Kamchatka, Russia. This treatment is popular after giving birth.<br />
Ekaterina’s family history is commercial fishing.  After the electric stimulation treatment she is rubbed down with a product and wrapped in plastic.  <br />
<br />
Businesses like this are coming back. During default Petropavlovsk (PK) hemorrhaged people... they all left for better jobs or other more profitable places.  PK is stable now mainly because there is a resource here... salmon.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-20.tif
  • Early morning in the Dharavi Slums of Mumbai, people walk along the train tracks that are lined with piles of trash. The third largest slum in the world and one of India’s homes to plastic recycling, garbage piles up, bags blow in, and pickers are drawn there to sort through it daily.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702766.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through piles of discarded plastic bottles at a recycling center. Plastic waste and global warming are companion threats. People’s need for clean drinking water increases as temperatures rise. The size of this center in Dhaka is equivalent to three football fields. In the winter when I made this photograph, only one of the football fields was filled with plastic waste. In the summer when everyone drinks more bottled water because of the excessive heat in a Bangladesh summer, all three football fields are filled with plastic waste. The slough next to this informal factory is filled with the overburden that is either shoved away or is blown by the wind into the neighboring watershed.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702769.JPG
  • Colored chips of plastic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River. Families wash shredded plastic for profit organizing it by color for recycling in Bangladesh’s informal plastic waste industry. Their hand labor is more accurate than highly industrialized recycling in the USA and the labor costs $2-$4 a day.  Blue bottle caps are sorted from red bottle caps and they are sorted from the green bottle caps. A huge overburden of plastic is thrown away landing in the river and washing out into the Bay of Bengal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692109.JPG
  • Squatters on the banks of the Buriganga River. Informal plastic waste workers sort plastic which is technically an illegal venture since they don’t pay taxes. Workers were hesitant to give much information fearing I might be surveying for the government. The Buriganga River flows into the Bay of Bengal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702817.JPG
  • Trash pickers in Bantar Gebang dumpsite outside Jakarta Indonesia work in one of the biggest landfills in the world. Security guards say 100 trash pickers that work around the tractors have died over the course of the dumps lifetime. There are thousands of trash pickers, and the only material they were scavenging was plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702837.JPG
  • Aerial view of Dow Chemical’s giant plant in Freeport, Texas, that produces 1.65 million tons a year of ethylene, the building block of polyethylene, one of the most widely used plastics.<br />
The first two products manufactured at Dow Texas Operations were magnesium and chlorine from seawater to aid the World War II effort. Seventy- five years later, Texas Operations’ 65+ production units are making thousands of products – most of them ending up in products that we use every day. In 2012 – Dow Chairman and CEO Andrew Liveris announced Dow’s Freeport site had been chosen as the home for a new world-scale ethylene cracker. From Dow PR: Dow facilities in Texas produce BILLIONS of pounds of products each year that enhance the quality of life for people around the globe. Dow products serve virtually every consumer market ranging from food to building and construction and from health and medicine to transportation. These products are used in a variety of end-use products – office supplies, mouthwash, pharmaceuticals, computers, furniture, paints, carpet, garbage bags, cosmetics, chewing gum, lozenges, cleaning products and food.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696239.JPG
  • Storm clouds build over plastic workers combing the Bantar Gebang dumpsite outside Jakarta, Indonesia. It is one of the biggest landfills, and security guards report that over 100 trash pickers have died working close to tractors while they were scavenging. The only material workers look for is plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702836.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers begin their daily rounds at the dump. They sort through mountains of garbage searching for plastic that is a precious find for recycling,
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760.JPG
  • Trucks full of plastic bottles pull into Toplun, a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines. The Philippines is the third largest contributor to ocean plastics with 500,000 tons a year. Twenty-five percent of the waste of the Philippines is produced in Metro Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692106.JPG
  • A conveyor belt carries mixed plastic to an optical sorter.<br />
Recology recovers 600 million pounds of recyclables each year and is the most advanced recycling plant on the planet. They invested 12 million USD last year for IR scanners and blowers that use puffs of air to separate different materials that are identified by the IR scanners. The USA has a recycling rate of 30 percent and with Recology's outreach and other programs they are at a 70 percent (of overall waste) being recycled. Robert Reed is main contact for Recology and he is a proponent of Zero Waste, which is being done more in Europe than USA. "Recycling," he says, "should be the last ditch effort."
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2692110.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other polymer composites, is inspected before electronics are added. The aircraft is fitted with ultra light weight cabin assemblies.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2696252.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702613.JPG
  • A plastic collector created a Christmas tree made from green plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702637.JPG
  • A family wades in Manila Bay which is polluted by household waste, plastics, and other trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702657.JPG
  • Plastic bottles are shredded at a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702682.JPG
  • Trash scavenger area on Jacinto-Vitas street in Baseco.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702704.JPG
  • A premature baby, with a plastic tube, in a hospital.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702731.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702754.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702755.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702761.JPG
  • Trash pickers burn broken plastic umbrellas to get the lumps of plastic and salvage the metal.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702764.JPG
  • In Dhaka, Bangladesh, laborers sort through a huge pile of discarded plastic bottles.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702772.JPG
  • Boats and trash on the banks of the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702785.JPG
  • Religious bathers and tourists swim in the Ganges on Tulsi Ghat on the Ganges after a plastic cleanup event sponsored by Renew Oceans.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-5.JPG
  • Religious bathers and tourists swim in the Ganges on Tulsi Ghat on the Ganges after a plastic cleanup event sponsored by Renew Oceans.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-6.JPG
  • Religious bathers and tourists swim in the Ganges on Tulsi Ghat on the Ganges after a plastic cleanup event sponsored by Renew Oceans.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-7.JPG
  • Religious bathers and tourists swim in the Ganges on Tulsi Ghat on the Ganges after a plastic cleanup event sponsored by Renew Oceans.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-8.JPG
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-10.JPG
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-11.JPG
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-12.JPG
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-13.tif
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-14.tif
  • Informal plastic waste industry community called Lahartara. Group of workers in front of living space are left to right: Zakir Seikh, Heena Bibi, Parveen Bibi, Bhalo Bibi, Alamin Seikh, and Suck Seikh. They moved a bit in and out of this order but the releases have their photos on them so I’ll sort the exact order according to edit. The photo with only one individual carrying big bag of plastic is Alamin
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-15.JPG
  • I was photographing this alley because it had plastic trash around 4AM and these two guys came out of their homes and placed their trash on the street… right in front of me. This is the basic problem… Varanasi has government trash workers but not nearly enough for the 1.2 million population. So people put their trash on the street and wait for informal trash workers/recyclers or some government worker to come by and clean up the street. It’s not a great system.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-16.tif
  • Informal plastic waste industry community called Lahartara.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-17.JPG
  • Dashasumedha ghat on the Ganges. This ghat is central to the ghats that run all along the river in Varanasi. Religious tourists bath and send votive candles out into the river that are full of plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-2.tif
  • Informal plastic waste worker community called Bajardiha. These are folks from West Bengal that go out early in the morning to collect and then start sorting plastic around 10AM. Renew Oceans sponsored a play in this community to raise awareness about hygiene and other issues associated with the plastic waste informal industry.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702760-3.JPG
  • Trash fills the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702788.JPG
  • Bundles of plastic for recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702789.JPG
  • A woman sorts through trash for plastic recycling.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702797.JPG
  • Colored chips of plas¬≠tic, collected, washed and sorted by hand, dry on the banks of the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702800.JPG
  • Pink plastic pellets are manufactured into flip flops.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702810.JPG
  • After sheets of clear plastic trash have been washed in the Buriganga River, a man spreads them out to dry to be sold to a recycler.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702812.JPG
  • A shop that sells plastics hangs it's wares outside the store.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702838.JPG
  • A shop that sells plastics.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702839.JPG
  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, only has enough landfill waste to fill a quart jar after two years.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702855.JPG
  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, recycles up plastic trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702856.JPG
  • A woman, who leads a zero waste lifestyle, recycles up plastic trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702857.JPG
  • A family practices the zero waste lifestyle and weighs their trash each week and try to reduce the landfill portion.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702868.JPG
  • An internet-connected-composting-urinal in the bar district of Nantes, France.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703507.JPG
  • A program to get standardized bottles for recycling to replace plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703518.JPG
  • Men from a food internet ordering company deliver in re-used glass jars as an attempt to reduce one-use-plastic.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703519.JPG
  • The hull of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, constructed of carbon fiber–reinforced plastic and other composites, which makes it lighter and more fuel efficient than aluminum airframes.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703528.JPG
  • A woman in her zero waste store in Nantes, France.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703537.JPG
  • A zero waste store in Nantes, France.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703538.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703539.JPG
  • Plastic trash in Freedom Island's ecotourism area.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2703567.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702610.JPG
  • A Tupperware party in Mumbai, India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702742.JPG
  • A Tupperware party in Mumbai, India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702744.JPG
  • Luzinterruptus, an anonymous art collective in Madrid that creates installation art with plastic waste all over the world.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702615.JPG
  • Piles of trash line the streets in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702616.JPG
  • Children play on the shore of Manila Bay which is polluted by household waste, plastics, and other trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702617.JPG
  • Piles of trash line the streets in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702632.JPG
  • Children play on the shore of Manila Bay which is polluted by household waste, plastics, and other trash.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702650.JPG
  • Piles of trash pollute the Estero de Binondo stream in Chinatown area of Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702669.JPG
  • Piles of trash pollute the Estero de Binondo stream in Chinatown area of Manila.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702672.JPG
  • Downtown Manila area called Raon where many plastic objects are sold in shop areas.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702678.JPG
  • Plastic bottles fill a recycling facility in Valenzuela, Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702695.JPG
  • A market in Manila that sells a large amount of plastic items.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702705.JPG
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702709.JPG
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702710.JPG
  • A plastic company that makes household items with older injection molding equipment.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702711.JPG
  • A trash picker in a plastic laminated casket.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702717.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702721.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in the Philippines.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702724.JPG
  • Plastic sorting, shredding, melting, and product production in Mumbai's Dharavi slum.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702728.JPG
  • Plastic sorting in Mumbai, India.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702740.JPG
  • In Kalyan, on the outskirts of Mumbai, trash pickers looking for plastics begin their daily rounds at the dump.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702759.JPG
  • Soft drink bottles with plastic straws on a street in Dhaka.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702775.JPG
  • Sheets of clear plastic trash are washed in the Buriganga River.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702818.JPG
  • Plastic pinwheels and balloons for sale.
    RANDY OLSON_MM8515_2702823.JPG
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