Bali villa’s ‘river’ view video stuns tourists

A video from a luxurious Bali villa has exposed a notorious problem plaguing the Aussie favourite holiday destination.

Luxury Bali villas cannot escape the island’s extreme waste crisis, which ranks Thailand as the world’s second largest plastic polluter, second only to China.

Bali local Gary Bencheghib recently shared on Instagram the state of a local river in Canggu from his Bali villa.

The video pans across a luxury villa with a crystal clear blue pool, over the fence and down to the river below, which is almost entirely covered by rubbish including plastic bottles and shopping bags.

“Come to Bali and enjoy a ‘river view’ they said,” Mr Bencheghib said on Instagram.

One commenter on Mr Bencheghib’s post said, “I was so disappointed when I arrived in Bali. I was expecting a tropical paradise and found a disgusting garbage dump.”

Another commenter said, “shocking taking all that money from tourists and not putting any back into proper rubbish collection.

“Come on Bali authorities, time to step up and become grown up citizens of the planet.”

Waste mismanagement is a notorious problem in Bali, with locals often left with no choice but to dump their rubbish on the side of the road or in the jungle.

The discarded waste has trickled into Bali’s extensive river network; the small island has 400 rivers, with 90 per cent of the population living 1km from a river.

Polluted rivers in Bali captured by Sungai Watch co-founder Gary Bencheghib. Picture: Supplied.

The two Indonesian islands of Bali and Java are home to 90 of the world’s 1000 most polluted rivers, says Mr Bencheghib, who is the co-founder of the Sungai Watch.

The charity organisation was founded in 2020 by Mr Bencheghib and his siblings, Kelly and Sam, that works to stop the flow of plastic from seeping into the ocean.

Sungai Watch co-founders and siblings from the left: Sam, Kelly and Gary Bencheghib who migrated from France to Bali when they were children. Picture: Sungai Watch

The organisation has a team of over 110 workers cleaning Indonesia’s most polluted rivers and installing “trash barriers”.

Since 2020, the organisation reported it has stopped over 1.7 million kilograms of trash from flowing into the ocean.

The small island of Bali has a population of over four million people, with an additional five million foreign tourists and eight million domestic visitors each year.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme Indonesia, with a total population of 250 million, is the fourth most populous country in the world and the second largest plastic polluter, after China.

On June 5 the Indonesian Ministry of Environment and Forestry announced its extension of its existing ban on certain single-use plastics to the end of 2029.

The ban includes shopping bags, plastic straws and cutlery and styrofoam food packaging.

Bali Province has banned single-use plastic bags, straws and styrofoam since 2019.