'Your plastic is here': how Easter Island copes with 500 pieces of rubbish an hour washing ashore

One of the world's most remote populations must deal with a flood of multinational plastic, much of it tossed overboard by the factory fishing ships hoovering up sealife just offshorePhotographs by Akira FranklinFrom a distance, the colourful beach at Ovahe seems a postcard-perfect mosaic of natural beauty. Craggy volcanic boulders, pockmarked from bubbling lava, jut from the sand, garnished by a necklace of pastel-coloured corals and seashells pounded to pieces by the wild, crashing surf.As the waves pull back, however, another reality emerges. The sand holds few corals or shells. Instead, the high-tide mark is a multinational carpet of plastics polished into an array of bleached Coca-Cola reds and Pepsi blues. Continue reading...