Maybe Skip Bali This Year

Bali is an Indonesian tourist hotspot. Trips there might pop up once in a while as a game show prize (or quite often if you happen to be reading this in Australia). Which is fine and all. But here's the thing about tourists: they leave trash laying around. In better-heeled countries this can be handled, the United States, France, Japan and such, but Indonesia isn't nearly as rich. The World Bank, for means of comparison, shows the United States with a per-capita GDP of $53,143 in 2013. France is $41,421. Sweden is $58,164. Surrounding them in the rankings are the other usual Western suspects.

Indonesia? $3,475. There's a lot of infrastructural issues and a lot of impoverished folks. Trash gets put on the backburner... and it builds up. And the conflict between revenue-generating tourism and land-depleting trash has kicked up friction. I toss you to this report from David O'Shea of Australia's SBS Dateline.