[Maldives] An island of toxic trash plagues the Maldives

Approximately one million tourists each year visit the Maldives, a tiny island nation south of India, for its sunny, warm weather and stunning natural beauty. But all those visitors, along with the country's 395,000 residents, are creating an ugly trash problem.

The government decided in December of 1991 to use one of its islands as the final destination for the huge amount of waste produced by the tourism industry. The country dug huge pits on a former lagoon named Thilafushi, which became known as "Rubbish Island." Waste was dumped into the middle of the pit, which was topped off with a layer of construction debris and then uniformly levelled with white sand.

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