I was just on a short vacation to the Sahara Desert. The plastic litter that I encountered there did not come as a surprise. I didn’t take any pictures of garbage. I don’t take very many pictures when I travel because overuse of the camera tends to filter the experience. I actually only took about twenty photos, just enough to document things for the children. The kids enjoyed our overnight trek enormously.
Water bottles were the most common litter hands down.
When I started searching for information about pollution and litter in the Sahara the first thing that I found had nothing to do with the Sahara. A blogger who is on the crew of an oceanic research vessel compared the idea of cleaning up the North Pacific Gyre to sifting the Sahara.
The second item that caught my attention was written by someone who was crossing a scary war torn section of the vast desert. She mentioned litter, but it was the least of her worries. Land mines present a more immediate danger than a few bajillion discarded water bottles.
We did not cross any borders on our trip, but we were in a border region. There were long stretches of road that were lined with makeshift gas stations. Libyan petroleum sells for a fraction of what Tunisians pay within their country.
These gas stands were typically nothing more than a hut made out of pallets and sheet metal with stacks of plastic containers piled up in front. Here is a photo taken by the people who write Yacht Strummer…
This business model uses a lot of plastic, but I am also concerned about the soil contamination from spilled gasoline.
