THE GUARDIAN
In India, 6,000 tonnes of plastic waste lies uncollected every day. Some of this washes up in Tamil Nadu state, where it pollutes and contaminates the food and water of communities living along the Bay of Bengal
All photographs by Jacques de Lannoy
The backwaters of the Chunnambar river in Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry) hint at what southern India’s Bay of Bengal coastline looked like before erosion and pollution transformed the landscape
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A woman lays out fish to dry on a sea wall in Puducherry that is strewn with rubbish. Every day, 15,000 tonnes of plastic waste is generated in India. Only 9,000 tonnes of this gets collected
Hundreds of drug capsules dumped in the sea are washed up on this stretch of coast, in an area where residents lay out fish to dry
Raw sewage from a ruptured pipe fills the space between homes and a sea wall constructed after the 2004 tsunami. The wall was built to hold back the waves in Thiruvottiyur Kuppam, north of Chennai’s port. However, residents are beginning to abandon their homes, fearing they will be flooded
Boats carry papier-mache statues of Ganesh for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. They will be thrown into the sea to return to nature. Originally, these statues were made from clay, which would dissolve in the water, but now non-biodegradable painted statues are being used. Hundreds of thousands of these are thrown into the sea, significantly increasing the levels of iron, copper, mercury, chromium and acid in the sea water
In Chennai, stray dogs stand in contaminated water in a rubbish dump. The water, polluted by chemicals from plastics and also by sewage, will find its way into Buckingham canal, finally discharging its contaminants into the Bay of Bengal and affecting fish that are caught for market
Families work in a rubbish dump encroaching on a wetland in an industrial district in the north of Chennai. In October 2015, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, launched a national campaign to clean up India. Chennai is among the cities trying to fight the rising levels of waste by banning the use of thin plastic bags, demanding that vendors use jute or cloth instead
Rubbish and raw sewage have infiltrated what remains of a mangrove forest in the Thengaithittu estuary and backwater in Puducherry’s port area. The mangroves are important nurseries, protecting young fish until they are mature enough to go out to sea and replenish fish stocks. Modi’s campaign aims to eradicate the practice of public defecation. Unicef estimates it is the main factor in the country’s high rate of diarrhoea-related deaths among children aged five and under
On the Adyar river in Chennai, rubbish from a slum has been dredged out of the river and built up into a makeshift dyke to fight flooding
A homeless man picks through rubbish on the streets of Chennai. Across India, 14.8m tonnes of plastic is used each year, one of the highest consumption levels in the world. It is set rise to 20m tonnes by 2020
