Maldives struggling with trash problem

Officials in the Maldives say they've temporarily banned the depositing of garbage from hotels on an island used almost entirely as a trash dump. The amount of garbage on Thilafushi, an artificial island 4 miles from the capital Male, has become so great it has begun spilling into its lagoon, the BBC reported Thursday. Workers on the island, mostly Bangladeshi, sift through the trash to look for materials their employers can sell or recycle. Much of the garbage is from the luxury resorts, which reportedly are not complying with rules on crushing their waste. The boats that bring trash to Thilafushi have recently started dumping it into the lagoon rather than waiting as long as seven hours to unload. The head of the Maldives' Environment Protection Agency, Ibrahim Naeem, said Thilafushi was not full and work was under way to improve waste disposal and ban open incineration.