Men face steep penalties after being caught on camera committing upsetting act at popular beach

Four people have been fined after being photographed littering at a popular beach in Brunei.

The offense occurred at Jerudong Beach, a stunning spot along the South China Sea, on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. The Borneo Bulletin reported that this continues a disturbing trend of people dumping their garbage along the beach.

Officials released photographs of several people dropping bags of trash along piles of rocks. The four presumed offenders — three local men and one from Bangladesh — received fines ranging from $156 to $235 (converted from Brunei dollars)

If they don't pay their fines and are prosecuted, the men could face an additional fine of more than $7,000 and up to a year in prison.

Brunei has strict laws against dumping, both for people using its beaches and for ships that discharge materials into its waters. Still, littering remains a big problem in the country.

In a 2019 study, researchers spent a week inspecting four Brunei beaches and collected more than 2,000 pieces of debris. More than 90% of that trash was plastic, and researchers found that common recreational-use beaches were more likely to have high amounts of littering.

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Globally, plastic litter is one of the biggest problems facing our environment. Two years ago, a study found that roughly 170 trillion pieces of plastic were in our oceans, weighing 2.6 million tons. It also discovered that plastic pollution was doubling every six years, so those numbers are assuredly higher now.

Much of that litter is microplastics — tiny, sometimes imperceptible fragments that typically break off of larger pieces. But even those small pieces pose big problems. They're so small that they become easily ingested, causing problems for marine life and even registering in human brain samples.

Laws such as Brunei's can hopefully act as a deterrent against littering for many people. But to fully ensure we have less plastic waste polluting our waterways, we must find ways to use less plastic. At home, that can start with simple swaps such as replacing single-use plastic water bottles and shopping bags with reusable options.

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