# World’s Largest Garbage Dumps

An episode of [Be Amazed](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1687637469), 5 Nov 2025, 25 min.

Audio: https://audio4.redcircle.com/episodes/d0dcbd89-231f-4abf-8865-bd6f33240b85/stream.mp3

The World produces more than 2.3 billion tons of municipal waste each year - that’s enough to fill 822,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools! And with just 16% of it recycled, it all has to go somewhere. From mega mountains and waves of trash to garbage islands that are twice the size of Texas, let's explore 10 of the largest garbage dumps in human history. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

## Transcript

[0:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The world produces more than two point three billion tons of municipal waste each year.
[0:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's enough to fill eight hundred twenty-two thousand Olympic-sized swimming pools.
[0:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And with just sixteen percent of it recycled, it all has to go somewhere.
[0:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: From mega mountains and waves of trash to garbage islands that are twice the size of Texas, let's explore ten of the largest garbage dumps in human history.
[0:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're listening.
[0:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You're listening.
[0:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: annually, India generates more than sixty-eight million tons of waste.
[0:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's roughly the same weight as forty-eight million cars.
[0:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The city of Mumbai alone produces two point seven million tons of garbage per year.
[0:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That means the city generates a whopping seven thousand four hundred tons of trash every twenty-four hours.
[1:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most of this waste is taken to the Deonar landfill, which stretches across three hundred twenty-six acres of an eastern suburb of Mumbai.
[1:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The oldest dump in India, the Deonar landfill, was set up in nineteen twenty-seven and has a daily capacity processing limit of two thousand tons.
[1:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But this upper limit is largely ignored as a massive five thousand five hundred tons of trash or regularly dumped at the site every day.
[1:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result of this chronic overburden, piles of garbage in its vicinity have been stacked up to one hundred fourteen feet high.
[1:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the same height as a ten-story apartment block.
[1:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Though it's definitely not a place anyone would want to live, but this trash mountain is still growing.
[1:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in the year of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, had to seek permission from the airport authority of India to increase the height of the dump to one hundred sixty four feet.
[2:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's about the same height as an eighteen story building.
[2:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If it grows much higher, soon planes are going to have to start flying around this garbage mountain
[2:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But even then, passengers won't be able to avoid the terrible smell.
[2:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although, that's not the only thing they'd have to worry about.
[2:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a decomposes, trash releases methane, a highly flammable and foul smelling gas.
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[2:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Today the site still holds some sixteen million tons of trash.
[2:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And as this garbage mound is only continuing to grow, one day it could dominate the Mumbai skyline.
[2:54] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now that would make for a really rubbish postcard.
[2:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every fifteen and a half hours Americans throw out enough plastic to fill the largest NFL stadium in the country, the eighty thousand seat capacity, AT&T Stadium.
[3:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So it isn't any surprise that the U.S.
[3:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: is home to three of the largest dumps in the world, one of which is apex regional.
[3:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: From certain angles, it almost looks like a sea of trash.
[3:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But this is the world's largest landfill site by area.
[3:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As it occupies two thousand two hundred acres, the equivalent of one thousand two hundred and fifty soccer pitches.
[3:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Located in Nevada, apex regional acts as the clean up station to America's never-ending party town, Las Vegas, which produces more than five billion pounds of waste every year.
[3:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most of this gets dumped in apex landfill, which is delivered at an average of three hundred tons per hour.
[3:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's heyday at received fifteen thousand tons of municipal solid waste daily, though these days nine thousand tons is more typical.
[4:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it's this daily total that makes it the largest active landfill in the US by capacity alone, boasting a staggering, fifty million tons of trash.
[4:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But this garbage heap also earns its key.
[4:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The nearby apex landfill, renewable energy generation facility digs a series of wells into the landfill to extract the methane gas it produces.
[4:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This flammable gas is used in turbine generators that produce eleven megawatts of electricity enough to power more than ten thousand homes.
[4:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Estimated to have a projected lifespan for another two hundred fifty years, apex will be there to clean up the mess for Las Vegas long into the future.
[4:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: I guess what's thrown out in Vegas stays in Vegas.
[4:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: boasting a whopping sixty million tons of trash the title of Europe's biggest landfill rightfully belongs to Malagrota in Rome, Italy.
[4:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now originally it was an illegal dump site but the landfill was officially recognized in nineteen eighty four.
[5:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After that four thousand five hundred to five thousand tons of waste were dumped there daily and the landfill sprawled to a size of six hundred eighteen acres.
[5:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Malagrada also holds the title for Europe's filthiest landfill, because alongside the one point three million tons of solid waste it received each year it also collected one hundred forty tons of untreated sludge from local sewage plants.
[5:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it was this untreated sewage that started to cause terrible environmental damage to the Galleria Valley where the landfill is located.
[5:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Underground aquifers were polluted and toxic chemicals such as arsenic, lead and ammonia, leeched into the soil.
[5:49] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The situation got so bad that in the XIII, the landfill was closed due to a European Union lawsuit over the lack of waste treatment.
[5:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That means the landfill was so filthy, it literally became illegal.
[6:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Mamma Mia.
[6:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: With Malagrada shut down, the nearby city of Rome was left with a serious trash problem.
[6:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every year, Rome produces one point seven million tons of trash.
[6:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: One point two million tons are exported to other provinces, only forty percent of which gets recycled.
[6:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the other half a million tons remains in the streets, which sometimes goes uncollected for weeks.
[6:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This Italian trash problem has become so bad that the mafia has gotten involved.
[6:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It may sound like a joke, but since the nineties organized crime groups have taken over lucrative waste management contracts, dumping trash in unauthorized fields or illegal landfills.
[6:48] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Industrial waste has often been illegally stored or burned, releasing toxins that contaminate the environment.
[6:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And the mafia isn't the only gang problem Italy's trash has created.
[7:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Uncollected Rubbish has attracted wild boars into the city of Rome foraging for food.
[7:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not settling for just scraps, these boars have taken to roaming the streets and cornering people for their groceries.
[7:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Who knew garbage could cause more problems than just a bad stench?
[7:16] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You know what, doesn't stink though.
[7:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Following my podcast, so you can get notified when I post even more content, it's all fresh, no garbage, I promise.
[7:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: All done?
[7:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Great.
[7:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Now, where are we heading next?
[7:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over in Latin America, there's an even bigger, seventy million ton trash giants scarring the landscape.
[7:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Located outside of Mexico City, Bordo Ponyente is one of the world's largest open-air landfills stretching more than nine hundred twenty-seven acres over the region.
[7:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's the same area as seven hundred football fields.
[7:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it wasn't always this way.
[7:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Bordo Ponyente began life as a dry lake bed.
[8:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: which was used to handle the debris from the nineteen eighty five mexico city earthquake soon it became an active landfill with hundreds of trucks dumping twelve thousand tons of trash there daily in some places the rubbish lies more than fifty six feet deep that's so deep you could theoretically bury ten average sized men stacked head to toe in it not sure there'd be many volunteers to test that out though
[8:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At its peak, the immense amount of decaying garbage was estimated to produce over two million tons of methane gas every year.
[8:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: While this was initially seen as a potential power source, methane is also a greenhouse gas responsible for global warming.
[8:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This meant it was actually the major source of the city's greenhouse gas emissions.
[8:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not a good look.
[8:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So in two thousand eleven, Porto Poniente was closed with the Mexican government building plants at its site to convert the organic waste into gas, charcoal, and pellets as a source of green energy.
[9:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So somewhere in Mexico City, there's someone charging their phone with the power of garbage.
[9:15] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As of right now, China has a population of one point four billion people who generate some two hundred fifteen million tons of garbage every year.
[9:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As a result, this country hosts one of the world's biggest waste management sites, the Low Gung landfill.
[9:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's located on the outskirts of Shanghai covers an area of eight hundred thirty acres and holds more than seventy five million tons of garbage.
[9:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: You might have noticed that this is almost one hundred acres smaller than the previously mentioned Bordeaux Poniente, but the rubbish here is piled more than sixty-five feet high, making it one of the biggest landfills in all of Asia.
[9:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every day around ten thousand tons of waste is dumped at the site, but this is only half of the twenty-six thousand tons generated in Shanghai alone,
[10:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The rest of which has to be exported to other landfills across the country.
[10:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Like most large landfills, the methane gas produced by all this trash is collected by a nearby power plant, although this one is able to generate enough energy to power one hundred thousand homes.
[10:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But China doesn't just process its own waste.
[10:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It also used to buy trash from other countries.
[10:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Until January, in fact, China imported most of the world's used plastic and paper waste.
[10:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So what most of us thought was being sent off for recycling at our local waste management centers was actually being shipped off to China.
[10:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's because China lacks its own softwood lumber industry.
[10:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So waste paper was sorted from trash and recycled to fulfill its paper needs.
[10:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Alongside paper, China recycled scrap iron and utilized waste plastic to make sandals, phones, bottles, hoses and more.
[11:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In this regard, China was the world's recycling can, receiving a gargantuan's seventy percent of the entire world's plastic waste.
[11:10] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The US alone was sending over seven hundred thousand tons of plastic waste to China every year.
[11:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, in two thousand seventeen, China began Operation National Sword and declared a series of strict bands on the import of other country's waste.
[11:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over night, the entire recycling industry was brought to a crippling halt.
[11:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Western countries such as the US, Canada, and the UK didn't possess the infrastructure to sort their recyclable materials from trash.
[11:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Instead, the whole China left was filled by poorer countries such as Bangladesh, Laos, Ethiopia, and Senegal.
[11:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These countries offer cheap labor but with minimal environmental regulation.
[11:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Definitely something to think about before you buy that next recyclable plastic bottle.
[12:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Next up Los Angeles is home to the glitz and glam of Hollywood, but it turns out the glamour of this city is hiding a lot of garbage, and I'm not just talking about that morbious movie.
[12:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: During its thirty years of service, LA's Puente Hills landfill had an army of one thousand five hundred trucks delivered twelve thousand tons of municipal solid waste daily from the homes of LA County.
[12:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But when it was shut down in two thousand thirteen, the amount of trash at this site weighed in at an unbelievable one hundred twenty seven million tons.
[12:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Most of which had been piled over five hundred feet high.
[12:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That meant this garbage pile was over ten times the height of the Hollywood sign.
[12:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Once it was decommissioned, engineers crushed the rubbish down and then covered it with five feet of topsoil to seal in the refuse.
[12:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Here, all that trash will remain decomposing until that site is deemed inactive.
[12:59] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But if the waste just needs to decompose, why bother covering it?
[13:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Well, in landfills that don't cover their waste, air pockets conform.
[13:08] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The oxygen trapped under the garbage increases the biological activity of the bacteria decomposing the trash.
[13:14] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This aerobic decomposition generates intense heat while other areas of compacted garbage undergo anaerobic decomposition and produce highly flammable methane gas.
[13:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Do you see where this is going?
[13:28] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Yep, the intense heat can set the methane a light and cause landfills to spontaneously combust.
[13:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: However, landfill gases are still dangerous even after the site is deemed inactive.
[13:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: As in the case of Port Washington landfill, where back in nineteen ninety-five, a snack bar that was being built on the closed landfill site exploded after the water heater ignited the gases.
[13:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: and never light a match near the easier.
[13:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Otherwise, you may end up like the North Carolina soccer mom who was retrieving her kids ball from a hole in Renaissance Park, a former landfill site when she lit a lighter to see in the shadows and was blown back by a huge fireball.
[14:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Luckily, she survived, though, it's pretty clear landfills, even inactive ones, can be a serious fire hazard.
[14:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So, don't ever risk having a candlelit picnic on a reclaimed landfill park, unless you like burn sandwiches.
[14:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Despite the name, fresh kills dump site in New York isn't some murderers mansion or a touring death metal band.
[14:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Kill is actually a Dutch word for stream, so the name translates to fresh streams.
[14:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: A pretty ironic name for the site of a stinking pile of garbage.
[14:46] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Collected in what was once mostly wetlands, this stat nylon landfill used to receive ten million tons of waste annually, and at its peak it contained a mammoth, one hundred fifty million tons of New York's finest garbage.
[15:01] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It consisted of four mounds which ranged in height from ninety to two hundred twenty five feet.
[15:07] \[SPEAKER_00\]: If fresh kills had stayed open, it's estimated it would have eventually reached a height of five hundred feet becoming the highest point on the east coast of the U.S.
[15:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although this massive elevation wasn't just made up of trash.
[15:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The debris and wreckage from the nine eleven disaster was also buried there, with a memorial erected to honor those who lost their lives to that fateful event.
[15:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But even then, Staten Island wasn't exactly thrilled to be the dumping ground for all of New York.
[15:37] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The social environmental and health impacts on Staten Islanders living near the site greatly reduced their standard of living.
[15:44] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And so, in two thousand and one, fresh kills closed and has since been converted into a nature park, which is now one of the most ecologically important habitats in the entire region.
[15:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Wow, that's what I call a glow-up.
[16:00] \[SPEAKER_00\]: South Korea is a country that has radically transformed over the last fifty years, evolving from a largely agricultural country to a booming tech giant.
[16:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And with this urban population explosion, there has also been a boom in the tons of waste generated.
[16:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Sudokwan landfill is the dumpster for the capital city's sole waste.
[16:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Stretching across a huge four thousand two hundred ninety two acres it receives between eighteen thousand to twenty thousand tons of waste from soul every single day.
[16:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It manages all this waste through an eco-friendly design where the ground has been prepared to ensure no harmful chemicals can leak into the soil itself and contaminate it.
[16:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Pipes have been installed to siphon any natural gas accumulated off into nearby power plants to be used as green energy.
[16:52] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Not only that, but at the end of the waste collecting day, the waste is sterilized and covered with around eight inches of soil, a process that's repeated with every fifteen feet of waste accumulated to make sure it decomposes well.
[17:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But Sudokwan isn't just a dump site.
[17:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Currently, that previously mentioned Siphon gas feeds into a landfill gas power station that provides fifty megawatts of electricity to the country.
[17:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's enough to power at least fifty thousand homes.
[17:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But the Korean government has gone one step further in transformed parts of Sudokwan into Dream Park, an ecological space and leisure park.
[17:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The site's management has set goals to plant a whopping ten million trees on the decommissioned site, alongside a wildflower garden.
[17:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They've even built a research center dedicated to improving eco-friendly waste management.
[17:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And it doughnuts air purification plants grown from wastewater on site to local schools.
[17:53] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's a dump dedicated to the future.
[17:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Moving on now, did you know Mount Everest is in the middle of the city of Delhi, India?
[18:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Okay, not the actual Mount Everest, but there is a mountain of trash and Delhi that's so high, it's been nicknamed Everest by the locals.
[18:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Standing at two hundred thirteen feet tall, the Gazi poor landfill is the product of Delhi's daily ten thousand tons of trash.
[18:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Although it isn't just dumped here, it's spread between not one but two other landfills that loom over the city, Balswa and Aklah.
[18:32] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Together the three have a combined land area of three hundred thirty-one acres and a total mass reaching an unbelievable three hundred million tons.
[18:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Technically, every last one of them is classed as full.
[18:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But despite this, trash is still being dumped there, taking up more and more of the skyline while creating something of a trashy mountain range across the city.
[18:56] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These heaps of trash range from one hundred eighty to two hundred thirteen feet tall.
[19:02] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Gazi poor landfill is the biggest, with the peak of its mound reaching an unreal twenty-storey's high.
[19:09] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Every day, seven hundred trucks dump three thousand tons of garbage at this landfill with its height growing by more than thirty feet every year.
[19:18] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At this rate soon, it'll be taller than the Taj Mahal.
[19:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And this garbage mountain is deadly.
[19:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Back in two thousand seventeen, fifty-five tons of garbage slid down its banks in a catastrophic landslide that swept away cars and people.
[19:35] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Man, that is not a nice way to go.
[19:38] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it gets worse.
[19:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Because their open air mounds of decaying garbage, these trash sites regularly catch fire and release toxic fumes creating hazardous environments for the locals.
[19:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: To combat the waist issue, the Indian government recently made efforts to reduce the size of these towering trash mountains, and the Oklah Landfill was reduced in size from one hundred eighty to one hundred twenty four feet, but trash Everest on the Ghazi poor landfill only continues to get bigger.
[20:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And one day, if Delhi keeps going the way it is, it could outgrow the real Everest.
[20:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Did you know that around nine million tons of trash enter the ocean each year?
[20:23] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After hearing that, it might not surprise you to learn that this is resulted in giant islands of trash forming in the oceans.
[20:31] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The great Pacific garbage patch is a swirling vortex of trash that stretches some six hundred eighteen thousand square miles across.
[20:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's three times the size of France, and it contains one point eight trillion pieces of plastic.
[20:47] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So if we do some maths, that's roughly two hundred and fifty pieces of plastic debris for every human in the world.
[20:55] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Oh my God.
[20:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, this mega garbage patch is actually comprised of two islands of trash.
[21:05] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The western garbage patch, located near Japan, and the eastern garbage patch, located between the U.S.
[21:11] \[SPEAKER_00\]: states of Hawaii and California, and the great Pacific garbage patch isn't the only Marine Trash Vortex?
[21:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: It's just the biggest.
[21:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The Atlantic and Indian oceans also have garbage patches culminating in five trash islands in total.
[21:27] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These trash islands form due to gyrs which are giant systems of circulating ocean currents.
[21:34] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Gyrs act like an oceanic conveyor belt circulating water, minerals, and heat around the globe.
[21:42] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Plastic pollution in the ocean mainly comes from household and commercial waste as it is blown from landfill sites entering river and sewer systems that flow out to sea.
[21:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: In other cases, landfill sites border on the edges of the ocean and rubbish landslides crash into the water.
[21:58] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The plastic waste is then drawn out by the tide into deep water.
[22:03] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Once plastic debris enters a gyre, it's moved along on the current and into the center of the gyre, a slow moving whirlpool where rubbish is trapped.
[22:12] \[SPEAKER_00\]: They are at gradually amasses into giant garbage islands, the floating plastic degrades under the sun into tinier and tinier pieces.
[22:21] \[SPEAKER_00\]: a process known as photo degradation.
[22:24] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But as plastic degrades, it leaches out toxic chemicals and absorbs pollutants.
[22:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: These toxic plastic fibers are then eaten by fish and other sea life wreaking havoc on the ecosystem, entered into the food chain they are later consumed by humans.
[22:40] \[SPEAKER_00\]: So be careful how much you eat at the sushi bar.
[22:43] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Blastic pollution doesn't just gather in the deep ocean though, it can also come crashing back into land and trash tidal waves.
[22:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: That's exactly what happened back in two thousand eighteen, in the Dominican Republic where they usually clear turquoise waters of Santo Domingo were turned into a sea of trash.
[23:04] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Over the following weeks, it required more than five hundred workers to collect over sixty-five tons of waste from the water.
[23:13] \[SPEAKER_00\]: But it's not just water at sea that can be catastrophically affected by pollution, as the rotten river of Indonesia proves.
[23:20] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The cetarm river in West Java is considered the most toxic river in the world.
[23:26] \[SPEAKER_00\]: At parts the water is completely hidden from view, obscured by tons of trash floating on the river's surface.
[23:33] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The water is toxic to drink with heavy metal concentrations of lead, aluminium, and iron, more than one thousand times above the U.S.
[23:41] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Environmental Protection Agency's safety standard.
[23:45] \[SPEAKER_00\]: This has resulted in nearly sixty percent of the river's fish species disappearing completely.
[23:51] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The cause of the river's foul pollution is the more than two thousand companies located in the area.
[23:57] \[SPEAKER_00\]: The discharge, twenty thousand tons of solid waste and three hundred forty thousand tons of chemical wastewater into the river daily.
[24:06] \[SPEAKER_00\]: After much international pressure, the Indonesian government recently announced a seven year cleaning program for the cetarm river with the goal of making its water drinkable by twenty thirty.
[24:17] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Cheers to that.
[24:19] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Right, well, I'm off to sort out my trash.
[24:22] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Which of these landfill sites shocked you the most?
[24:25] \[SPEAKER_00\]: And have you seen any of them with your own eyes?
[24:29] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Let this be a reminder to be more conscious about our consumer habits and mindful of the trash that we all live in the world.
[24:36] \[SPEAKER_00\]: Thanks for listening, see you next time.

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